With the Mets' spring training facility in Port St. Lucie no longer hosting workouts and the regular season delayed until May 9 at the earliest, Tampa-native Pete Alonso tweeted Tuesday that he was interested in playing in pick-up games once it's safe.
"Any pro guys in Tampa want to get together and play some pick up games?" Alonso tweeted, before clarifying that he would play MLB The Show "for now and pickup games when we're clear."
When one twitter user told Alonso to stay home no matter what due to coronavirus fears, Alonso said that -- at some point -- players will have to resume getting ready for the season.
"Well, if there's no baseball for a while, gotta get out there at some point to stay ready," Alonso tweeted.
The recommendation from the CDC in recent days was for a pause of gatherings of 50 people or more for a period of eight weeks. It was that recommendation that led MLB to push back the start of the regular season again.
The federal government went a step beyond that on Monday, recommending that people do not gather in groups of 10 or more.
With all major sports shut down and most people in the United States and most of the world practicing social distancing in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus, it remains unclear when MLB will resume.
When things do get going again for MLB, there will almost certainly be a ramping up process for players before the regular season begins.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said on Monday that the league still wants to play as many regular season games as possible, but it's getting very hard to imagine a scenario where the 162-game schedule isn't sliced significantly when baseball returns.