Imagine that a Major League Baseball player and his family make painstaking arrangements to move to their team’s home city and live there safely. Wearing masks and gloves, they hunt for a rental home, then manage the delicate process of pandemic-era relocation.
They can’t just run to the store or ask neighbors for help. They spend the first days and weeks looking for a FreshDirect time slot and figuring out how and where the kids can play. Then, the player goes on the road, leaving everyone in the apartment or house to pray that he won’t bring home a deadly virus.
Now imagine that the player is traded five weeks later.
One of the many quirks of this shortened, risky season is that the Aug. 31 trade deadline will arrive a little more than a month after Opening Day. This will create new challenges for general managers, who must assess their roster needs almost immediately upon the start of games, acquire minor leaguers without being able to scout them, and calculate the value of renting a player for a mere month.
But beyond baseball considerations, the human concerns are different this year, too. Is it even ethical to make a trade during a pandemic?
All GMs have an obligation to their organizations and fans to play by rules laid out by the league. We wouldn’t criticize an individual for doing so within the broader context that there will be a trade deadline. But we also wonder if the idea of uprooting a player and causing extra travel, logistics and anxiety gives anyone extra pause this year.
We posed this question to several top baseball operations executives. Several said that, while it’s an interesting question, it’s one they haven’t considered yet. Teams have been so consumed by the process of preparing ballparks for the resumption of spring training in compliance with health and safety protocols – not to mention building rosters – that they haven’t had time to think past Opening Day.
A few others leaned in the direction of feeling comfortable with trades.
“It’s a good question under the circumstances,” said one high-ranking National League baseball operations official. “I understand both points [in favor of and against trades]. I lean towards, if we are going to do this, let’s do it with a competitive mindset.”
Said a senior American League executive, “I’m OK with trades. The player probably has a ‘virus veto’ if he does not want to go, although it could cost him his salary balance. Also, the player will be moving bubble to bubble. The family may be dislocated, but that’s true in any season and this one is a lot shorter.”
The “virus veto” is not actual language in MLB’s Operations Manuel, but it essentially exists via a players’ right to opt out of the season. If a player is on the trade block, any responsible GM would check with that player’s agent to see if he is willing to move.
One would hope that teams respect the players’ wishes, but if they do not, the player could always opt out.
It remains to be seen how active this trade deadline will be anyway. Thirty games in, not many clubs will be far enough out of contention to deem themselves sellers. And buyers might be wary sacrificing assets to acquire a player who might later test positive for COVID-19.
In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, Yankees GM Brian Cashman said that it could go either way.
“It’s easy to say on the front end of it, that it’s highly unlikely to have a crazy amount of activity,’’ Cashman said. “But once you settle in and start playing … those competitive juices start kicking in and you want to do everything you can to reinforce the roster.”
Add it to the list of things for players and their families to worry about.