Around the League 2020 Edition

That means one team is going to have an off day everyday until the Marlins come out of quarantine.

Seems like they’re also looking to pause the Phillies as well. Yankees may wind up playing 4 against the Orioles this week instead of the games against marlins and Phillies.
 
This whole thing has become a cluster*uck. This has been the problem since MLB initially hatched this "plan". An outbreak doesn't just affect one team - the Phillies aren't playing until Friday (at the earliest), the Yankees have already missed two games, the Orioles have already missed two games. What do you do when the same kind of thing happens when the Dodgers are playing the Angels? Then when the Cardinals are playing the Cubs?

You can't have anything resembling an "even playing field" at this point - the Marlins can't possibly field a competitive roster, even if MLB loosens service-time rules and they promote their best prospects with no penalty. Most of them aren't "ready" to compete at the MLB level, otherwise they'd have already been on the 40-Man Roster. The same thing goes for every rebuilding club - who in the world is an available free-agent someone can sign that actually even belongs in AAA or AA that someone can sign to fill out their roster that hasn't opted-out already? King Felix is out. Markakis gone. We already scooped up Adams and Chacin. The pickings are so slim that you're going to have the lucky MLB teams that dodge this thing (for the most part) playing against a bunch of junior college talent level players.

If there's anything good that comes out of this, it will be that Folty's value may be the highest it's ever been to someone that thinks they can make it to the expanded postseason.
 
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This whole thing has become a cluster*uck. This has been the problem since MLB initially hatched this "plan". An outbreak doesn't just affect one team - the Phillies aren't playing until Friday (at the earliest), the Yankees have already missed two games, the Orioles have already missed two games. What do you do when the same kind of thing happens when the Dodgers are playing the Angels? Then when the Cardinals are playing the Cubs?

You can't have anything resembling an "even playing field" at this point - the Marlins can't possibly field a competitive roster, even if MLB loosens service-time rules and they promote their best prospects with no penalty. Most of them aren't "ready" to compete at the MLB level, otherwise they'd have already been on the 40-Man Roster. The same thing goes for every rebuilding club - who in the world is an available free-agent someone can sign that actually even belongs in AAA or AA that someone can sign to fill out their roster?

Would anyone have said Contreras was ready before we lost both starting catchers? I mean, build a better system and the loss hurts less. The marlins of all teams have sold off and drafted earlier than most teams of late.
 
This whole thing has become a cluster*uck. This has been the problem since MLB initially hatched this "plan". An outbreak doesn't just affect one team - the Phillies aren't playing until Friday (at the earliest), the Yankees have already missed two games, the Orioles have already missed two games. What do you do when the same kind of thing happens when the Dodgers are playing the Angels? Then when the Cardinals are playing the Cubs?

You can't have anything resembling an "even playing field" at this point - the Marlins can't possibly field a competitive roster, even if MLB loosens service-time rules and they promote their best prospects with no penalty. Most of them aren't "ready" to compete at the MLB level, otherwise they'd have already been on the 40-Man Roster. The same thing goes for every rebuilding club - who in the world is an available free-agent someone can sign that actually even belongs an AAA or AA that someone can sign to fill out their roster?

**** happens. Imagine forums and social media if the 81 MLB season happened again. Just have to roll with what we got.
 
Would anyone have said Contreras was ready before we lost both starting catchers? I mean, build a better system and the loss hurts less. The marlins of all teams have sold off and drafted earlier than most teams of late.

The problem is self-inflicted though. IF MLB had decided to fairly compensate prospects being called-up without concern for service-time, this wouldn't be nearly the issue. Rebuilding clubs would have stacked their camps with prospects so they wouldn't have to worry about losing a year of development. Had that happened, quite a few teams that have scooped up journeyman veterans to have in front of those prospects wouldn't have wasted as much money on them (since they're not going to be competitive anyway). The Orioles wouldn't have picked up Charlie Clutch guys like Jose Iglesias and Pat Valiaka, the Giants probably wouldn't have brought in guys like Pence, Wilmer Flores, Darin Ruf, etc., Maybin, Schoop, and Cron probably wouldn't be Tigers, and so on. Those types of guys would still be free-agents that contenders could pick up as emergency replacements/fill-ins. As it stands now, exactly which prospects are you going to give up for somebody like that??? AA has obviously been living right and has been extremely lucky - nobody else like Adams/Chacin is out there at this point, so most other contenders either have to plug in a prospect that isn't quite ready (Contreras/Pache/Waters/Anderson for example) or trade prospects that are much more valuable than replacement players if they need a replacement-level player for a couple weeks. That's great for parity, but sucks for the teams (like us) that have built the types of systems you're talking about and are also ready to win - they're not going to be able to keep hoarding prospects to build deep systems.

Back to Contreras, that's another example of getting unbelievably lucky. NO ONE was ready to give him a shot - even as a backup - that's why they gave Flowers $4 million. He and A-Jax all but guaranteed we wouldn't have seen William this season barring a catastrophe. Then the catastrophe landed before they got on the bus to the airport to play the Mutts. There's absolutely no way they had any intention of starting his clock at all - now they have to keep every finger and toe crossed that this mess doesn't linger on d'Arnaud and Flowers for a couple months or they've burned a year already.

It's not likely to be an issue, but what happens if the season is cancelled before they get back?
 
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Seems like they’re also looking to pause the Phillies as well. Yankees may wind up playing 4 against the Orioles this week instead of the games against marlins and Phillies.

So the Phillies are going to skip this 4 game series against the Yankees. Watch they never have to make those games up, and end up with a better record than us by 1 or 2 games.
 
If the Phillies come out of this with no problems, baseball is good. If the Phillies go down, MLB is in big trouble and football will be in trouble.
 
Markakis has in fact rejoined the team. He is NOT active and no time line has been set for his return to active status.

Sobotka down to make room for Schebler who will be in uni tonight along with Flowers and d'Arnaud.
 
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