How are you staying fit during the Coronavirus shut down?
Walking around the neighborhood? Basement weight set? Hot yoga? Peloton?
Phillies infielder Jean Segura is pushing an Escalade down the street, via his Instagram account:
ESPN’s Jeff Passan, who has great taste in music:
* The caveat agreed to by the players and league is that they will consider playing games at neutral sites instead of home ballparks — and will consider the feasibility of playing in empty stadiums and just how proper a solution it may be for both sides and especially fans.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) March 27, 2020
That caveat basically nullifies bullet point one, so I’m not really sure it makes sense, nor do I imagine we’ll meet those bullet points anytime soon.
Just a hunch, but baseball begins in empty stadiums later this summer. That’s my guess.
Sports Betting Updates
We made it to opening day!
Unfortunately there’s no baseball because of the Coronavirus, so that sucks.
In lieu of games that mean something, MLB and its 30 teams are loading up the slate using the #OpeningDayAtHome hashtag, which links us to replays of classic games and other cool items.
Here are some of the Phillies-related things that are on deck:
- 9 a.m. – replay of Bryce Harper’s walkoff grand slam against the Cubs (Phillies website and MLB Twitter)
- 4:10 p.m. – Rhys Hoskins takes on Miguel Rojas in MLB The Show (Phillies Youtube page)
- 6 p.m. – replay of the Signing Harper Documentary (NBC Sports Philadelphia)
- 7 p.m. – replay of Roy Halladay’s 2010 perfect game (NBC Sports Philadelphia)
And here’s some of the national stuff MLB is showing:
Let’s do a theoretical here:
Pick an arbitrary date for the start of the MLB season, like June 1st. Say we just start the year at that point, pick up the schedule there, and play a shortened campaign.
Any issues? Problems?
You’d save yourself the headache of rescheduling, but the standings would be unbalanced due to the loss of divisional games, which would have to be weighted or worked into the back-end of the calendar somehow. The Phillies are set to play six divisional series between now and June 1st, which would be lost in our theoretical scenario.
One of possible solutions to reworking the schedule is to play doubleheaders, which Jeff Passan writes about in a story posted to ESPN this morning:
Terrible news for the Mets…
New York Mets starter Noah Syndergaard has a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow and is expected to undergo Tommy John surgery in the near future, sources tell ESPN. The procedure will keep him out until at earliest April 2021 and likely into the summer months.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) March 24, 2020
…and good news for Atlanta, Philly, Florida, and Washington batters, who won’t have to face the former All Star.
If you’re really missing baseball, I have a video you can watch, after the jump:
Everybody is trying to get creative while stuck at home.
Athletes are filming their basement workouts. Celebrities are singing an awful version of John Lennon’s Imagine. Broadcasters are narrating non-sports activities in an effort to provide a few laughs.
One of those folks is the great Doc Emrick, who is doing play-by-play of normal activities, as you can see in this video here:
Didn’t expect this today, but it’s a very enjoyable video clip.
Here’s a rational and reassuring Coronavirus message from the Phils’ manager:
They’re working off the CDC-recommended timeline with this statement:
Eight weeks would take us to May 11th, which was a Phillies off day preceding a six-game home stand against the Dodgers and Cardinals. That wouldn’t be a bad way to open the campaign, if we’re back to normal by then, though I have a feeling that that’s optimistic.
Who the hell knows.
