It’s Monday once again, and here’s your first heaping serving of news:
The head honchos of the Cactus League have sent a letter to MLB recommending that Spring Training be postponed in Maricopa County, Arizona, where a large share of Spring Training activity takes place. While the Braves normally spend their March in Florida, this could still have substantial implications for the season schedule as a whole.
BREAKING Arizona’s Cactus League tells @MLB it wants to delay start of spring training because of Maricopa County’s high COVID infection rate. #12News pic.twitter.com/H61DbDurVY
— Brahm Resnik (@brahmresnik) January 25, 2021
For more, see the 12News article here.
Earlier, MLB and Commissioner Rob Manfred communicated to teams their expectation for a standard, 162-game season. It is not self-evident exactly how this latest snag will inform anything, but it does put plainly the fact that it is not exactly going to be smooth sailing from now to Opening Day, given that a pandemic is still very much brutally happening throughout the U.S.
One possibility may be for MLB to suspend formal Spring Training but allow intrasquad workouts, either at Spring Training facilities or closer to teams’ home MLB parks. This would potentially enable players to get up to speed without actual games against opponents from other teams, and possibly expedite returning to game action without needing a “spring camp” once everything is cleared to resume. But, any path forward likely depends on the actual-on-the-ground situation in Arizona and Florida, as well as the broader U.S.
Stay tuned for updates, as tortuous as they may be.