Rob Manfred’s suggestion that baseball season could be shut down turned out to be as legitimate as a father’s threat to turn this car around right now.
“We are playing,” the MLB Commissioner told Karl Ravech of ESPN.com. “The players need to be better, but I am not a quitter in general and there is no reason to quit now. We have had to be fluid, but it is manageable.”
The effort to blame players for the outbreak comes amid indications that the players indeed bear blame, especially on the Marlins. But even if the players do everything they’re supposed to do, it’s impossible to prevent potential outbreaks.
Baseball nevertheless will press on, even if it ultimately means multiple teams playing fewer than 60 games.
“We’ve got to be flexible on that,” Manfred said Saturday, via the Associated Press. “Look, this is one of the reasons that we revisited the issue of the expanded playoffs. If it turns out that some guys play 60, some guys play 58, they have this new thing called winning percentage. We can sort that out.”
Get used to “this new thing called winning percentage.” If each and every NFL team can’t play 16 regular-season games this year due to the pandemic, winning percentage will determine playoff berths and playoff positioning.