In the face of the looming international crisis that is taking lives, it feels almost disrespectful to ask questions out loud about issues of far less importance. When the priorities are protective masks, accessible testing and increased hospital capacity, most everything else is deferred, or settled out of sight.
Quietly, Major League Baseball officials and the MLB Players Association are working through a laundry list of pending process questions tied to the calendar. What to do about termination pay for players who don't make 40-man rosters. The draft. The international signing period.
It's a good thing that it's all being done out of sight, because there is little appetite for a public debate about how to resolve service-time questions, arbitration and free-agent eligibility. Not when families are huddled in their homes, concerned about jobs, food, loved ones.
In recent years, the relationship between MLB and the union has been worse than at any time since the mid-1990s, the last time the sport was shut down by a labor stoppage. But as a respected former player said Saturday, moving forward, the sides need each other. Collaboration is required under current circumstances and beyond, because the baseball industry may not look anything like it did at the outset of spring training just more than a month ago.
It's impossible to know when games will resume. It's hard to even guess at this point what the temporary and permanent damage to the business model will be. For agents and executives, the idea of entering into any serious contract talks over a player now would be pure folly because the context is impossible to define.
Six weeks ago, it was widely assumed that several $400 million deals were on the horizon, for the likes of Mookie Betts and Francisco Lindor, following the winter spending spree for Gerrit Cole, Stephen Strasburg, Anthony Rendon and others.
Now ... who knows? Who knows what the financial landscape will be going forward?
The Philadelphia Athletics were baseball's preeminent team in 1929, stacked with future Hall of Famers Lefty Grove, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Cochrane and Al Simmons, managed by another Hall of Famer, Connie Mack. But Wall Street crashed, the Great Depression began and the Athletics' attendance dropped significantly, from more than 800,000 in '29 to just under 300,000 in 1933, and Mack sold off Grove and Foxx.
Two teams suffered significantly the last time that MLB play was interrupted for an extended period of time. At the time of the players' strike in 1994, the Montreal Expos seemed to have a real shot at reaching the World Series, with a 74-40 record and a lineup that included Larry Walker, Moises Alou and Marquis Grissom, and a rotation built around Pedro Martinez. After the strike ended, Montreal's ownership stripped the roster for the financial savings -- and per-game attendance plummeted from 24,543 in '94 to 17,683 in '95. The franchise never recovered and was moved to Washington in 2005.
The Blue Jays' attendance also took a big hit, and similarly, payroll was stripped. A model franchise that won back-to-back titles in 1992 and 1993 would not appear in the playoffs again until 2015.
History shows us that when baseball comes back from hard times, some franchises will recover quickly and move on -- and some may struggle.
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With the relationship between MLB and the union getting ugly in recent years, a recalibration is needed, and it might already be underway. The goal of both sides is to identify what's fair for everyone in a new context, including the game's devastated patrons.
I asked a baseball official the other day, via text, what the baseball industry will look like when this is over. Really, it's a question applicable for most industries. "I guess it would depend on the state of the world," he responded.
• The Associated Press reported Wednesday that Major League Baseball could cancel the 2020 draft, an option that could be attractive for practical considerations. Colleges and high schools are shut down, players aren't being evaluated as usual because games aren't being played, and of course, if the established draft rules remain in place, then teams would be required to sign players to bonuses at a time when, as mentioned, nobody knows what the financial landscape will be.
From the perspective of amateur players, however -- especially elite players likely to be taken early in the draft -- this may not be in their best interests. Undoubtedly, there will be some players who will want to move into professional baseball as soon as possible for the sake of family and financial needs. Imagine if you are an elite college pitcher expected to be chosen near the top of this year's draft class, and your parents' income has been devastated by the coronavirus. Your instinct might be to sign professionally as soon as possible. A canceled draft would undercut that effort.
In the eyes of Vanderbilt's Tim Corbin, coach of many big leaguers past, present and likely future, it will be important to keep the process as normal as possible.
"From a collegiate standpoint, there is still much decision on what to do with seniors, juniors, etc. on the extra year," he wrote in an email response to questions about the possible cancelation of the draft. "I am not sure what the NCAA is going to do, but it has communicated publicly about restoring years for student-athletes. That in itself creates a major issue for college baseball and we are not built to handle that ... educationally, physically or feasibly."
"I understand that seniors lost a year of eligibility, as well as opportunities at having a season or a postseason, but everyone lost a year of something. We cannot get that back. Ted Williams lost three years of his career to the military; life happens.
"As much as I would personally like our seniors back, it creates a clog in the system, you have seniors staying in, the potential of juniors granted another year as well, then high school seniors coming in right behind them. When you have no movement of players, you have a collegiate system that is combustible, too many players with not enough space. We have to move forward and keep natural movement in the system.
"Major League Baseball impacts the entire amateur landscape -- it naturally creates an 'in and out' system of players. Right now, most professional teams have evaluated college and junior college players through last spring, last summer, last fall and the early part of this spring. They have built up a credible database on many eligible collegiate players. This being the case, it makes sense for them to modify the draft in numbers."
Corbin continued: "Keep the draft restricted to collegiate seniors, juniors, junior college players and draft-eligible sophomores. Higher-profile juniors and eligible sophomores will be at a premium, but the senior player becomes more of a 'safer stock,' so to speak. They are older, have played higher level games and have been evaluated more. For one year, the high school player enters college or junior college -- if a kid wants professional baseball sooner than three years, then he can attend junior college for a year -- this allows the industry to evaluate this class of kids over the next year or three years."
This way, Corbin writes, "Spending is down and player entry into professional baseball is less -- this keeps movement in the system. For a Northern person, it's like letting the water trickle through your pipes so they won't freeze. Same situation here, the system has to move, but move at a smaller rate so that both organizations (college and professional baseball) can realize and handle the volume of players and the economic impact that will occur because of the virus. These are my ideas and my ideas only, but I think they make sense for Hofstra University as much as Vanderbilt."
If small-market teams don't feel they have the resources to participate in this year's draft, an alternative is for MLB and the union to negotiate a one-time arrangement through which draft picks can be dealt for future assets. Let's say, for argument's sake, that the Baltimore Orioles, who hold the No. 2 pick in the draft, did not want to commit the millions of dollars required under the current system because of concerns over revenue loss. For this year and this year only, perhaps, an amendment could be made enabling the Orioles to flip that draft choice for future selections.
• On the Baseball Tonight podcast, some former players have told great stories recently, including David Freese (discussing the epic Game 6 of the 2011 World Series in vivid detail) and David Wells, who talks about the all-time great '98 Yankees and a 24-hour period that included a "Saturday Night Live" after-party, Jimmy Fallon, a hangover and a perfect game.