MLB’s latest move, Phillies’ coronavirus outbreak leave 2020 season on the brink

By Dave Sheinin
6/19/2020, 9:02:28 p.m.

On what might have been the bleakest day of an exceedingly bleak spring for Major League Baseball, the owners effectively halted negotiations with the players’ union over the economic terms of the 2020 season — and that didn’t even constitute the worst news on a day that also saw the novel coronavirus pandemic assert its ultimate dominion over the entire endeavor.

While the afternoon hours Friday were consumed with the sobering news that five players and three staff members of the Philadelphia Phillies at the team’s spring training headquarters in Clearwater, Fla., had tested positive for the coronavirus — leading to the closing of the team’s facilities and an expansion of testing and contact tracing for other personnel on site — the evening brought a statement from the union that signaled the endgame had arrived for the bitter, months-long negotiation over the 2020 schedule.

What we’re left with: The last resort for MLB to salvage a 2020 season would be to impose a 50-game, late-summer mini-season and hope even that can be pulled off amid a worsening public-health crisis that already has shown up across big league organizations.

“MLB has informed the Association that it will not respond to our last proposal and will not play more than 60 games,” the union said in a statement Friday night. “Our Executive Board will convene in the near future to determine next steps. Importantly, Players remain committed to getting back to work as soon as possible.”

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Friday’s news out of Phillies camp, the first known outbreak for a major league team, may not have doomed the season, but it was enough of a setback to call into question the likelihood of finding a feasible path — with or without a deal on economics — through the pandemic.

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