Top three reasons fans at MLB playoffs are a terrible idea
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred says fans will be allowed at the NLCS and World Series: for at least three reasons, it’s a terrible idea.
And just like that, there is less than a week to go in the 2020 MLB season.
More to the point, less than a week to go in a complete 2020 MLB season. It’s an achievement that seems remarkable given all the potential for setbacks. Given the Miami Marlins outbreak that happened just three games in. From disease to forest fires to an abundance of injuries, and everything else in between, all thirty of MLB’s teams managed to play the majority of their sixty game schedule in enough time to begin the wild rollercoaster ride that will be this sixteen team MLB postseason that will end with the 2020 World Series.
Much like the NBA playoffs, these games have been a welcome respite from the real world realities of 2020. A pleasant distraction on most nights. At times, an opportunity to help bring attention to the need to constantly fight against social injustice. But almost always, at least to the greatest extent possible given games were being played at all, carried out with an eye towards health and safety being of paramount importance.
Which makes it all the more remarkable that MLB, voiced by commissioner Rob Manfred, had the unmitigated gall to announce that fans will be allowed to attend the NLCS and World Series.
It’s insanity. It’s frankly stupid. It’s a terrible look for the one professional sports league that started/restarted the 2020 sports season needing to make up for spending months fighting about money while millions of its fans faced loss of life and livelihood.
However, just as the 2020 MLB season to this point has been a needed distraction, you didn’t come to a baseball blog needing to be reminded that there’s a pandemic going on. Even if someone might need to remind Mr. Manfred and the owners who signed off on this idea.
There are actually plenty of just about baseball concerns with having fans in the stands for the MLB playoffs- and yes, one big bigger than baseball one. What are they? So glad you asked.
Safety still second for MLB
Alright, let’s get the elephant out of the room first before diving into those all about baseball reasons fans are a bad idea for the MLB playoffs.
There really isn’t a way to argue that welcoming fans into stadiums doesn’t present an increased risk to health and safety.
Now, is it possible to keep players and coaches themselves acceptably safe with fans in the stands? Perhaps. Certainly, letting fans in is not the same thing as allowing them to clamor for autographs and selfies by the dugouts. I’m sure they’ll all be wearing masks, and spaced out in little groups in the same manner fans have been to this point at NFL games.
The problem with that NFL comparison though is that the NFL chose to allow teams to start the season this way. If the NFL season is postponed, it will likely happen before we reach the postseason. Indeed, many fans probably expect this to happen. So there’s some acceptance of the risk, even it comes in the form of guarded skepticism. In the case of MLB, there procedure has largely worked to this point. Yes, the cases of the Cardinals and Marlins did happen- but lessons seem to have been learned in both cases. MLB got here, in the end. The playoffs are here.
If an outbreak occurs now, in the playoff bubble, public outcry would be directed entirely at MLB. Manfred in particular. It would not just be the fault of the “blasted virus”, but MLB for introducing more risk into an already risky situation.
Lastly, this is about increased risk to health and safety in general. Not just to players and coaches with a billion dollar industry invested in protecting them. The fans are a factor here too, remember. Tens of thousands of fans are going to choose to attend these games, coming into closer contact with other people than they would have otherwise. Thousands of fans are going to choose to buy airline tickets, consequently coming into much closer contact than they would have otherwise, to attend these games.
The odds are absolutely in favor of someone getting sick as a result of this, and it’s absolutely certain that it will be someone that didn’t have to.
Competitive balance
Secondly, let’s talk competitive balance, and how MLB is showing every sign of having been a D student in high school science.
While the NBA has been the most dramatic example, all of these empty stadiums are basically laboratory experiments. Plenty of controls in place, the only variable being the road team. And even that road team, by the end of the experiment, has been to that particular lab multiple times and similar ones sixty times.
Baseball itself is, more than any other sport, all about routines. Players know what to expect, grinding it out over as many as 162 games in a full season. During a regular year, it would be received as insanity to propose suddenly dramatically changing anything with the actual playing conditions just in time for the most important games of the season.
Unfortunately, that is exactly what MLB and Rob Manfred are proposing. Players have not had to play in front of fans since March. For the rookies, they will suddenly be asked to play in front of crowds for the first time as professionals. This is not the same as attendance spiking at the ballpark once playoff time comes around. This is a dramatic change in how the experiment of playing professional baseball has been conducted to this point, and it’s an unfair shift at this point in time. Players will say all the right things in the weeks ahead…but for many, it will just be because it’s what they’re expected to say.
Understandably, players are supposed to be playing in front of fans. However, this is not just any season- it’s the 2020 season. The Covid-19 shortened season. These stadiums have been empty for a reason. And while I’m sure some players will be legitimately jazzed about the adrenaline high of playing in front of thousands of paying customers, I’m equally sure that just as many, if not more, players are going to have a serious nagging question about health and safety in the back of their minds they haven’t had to worry about since they were driving home from spring training when baseball was shutdown.
Players shouldn’t have to spend a second thinking about that- all their focus should be on the opponent in front of them and the game at hand. Pressure of a packed house is something you sign up for when you put on a major league uniform. Fearing for your safety is not. If fans had been there in reduced numbers even for just the past month, it would be one thing. This idea is something else entirely.
This entire postseason is a product of the conditions that created it. So it should be conducted under those same conditions.
Neutral field? Not so much, MLB
Which brings us to how this MLB playoff bubble isn’t going to be anything close to a neutral field.
For starters, typing MLB playoffs has been a bit of a misnomer to this point. Because it is just the NLCS and World Series that are choosing to open doors to fans. The ALCS, which is to be played at Petco Park, will not be doing do. Granted, this might have more to do with the policies of the state governments of Texas and California than anything else.
Regardless, by the time the Fall Classic rolls around, fans will be in the stands to watch it.
Apparently, we are supposed to believe at this point that the denizens of Globe Life Park will accordingly split into fifty-fifty camps for AL and NL representative. Or perhaps be so enamored with the gift of live baseball, that they will just politely applaud from beginning to end.
Certainly, that is a mathematical possibility. Likely to happen though? Not so much.
No, what is more likely is that a one-sided hellstorm of angry Houston Astros defenders is going to cheer for whoever plays the Los Angeles Dodgers. What is more likely is that either New York Yankees fans will buy all the tickets, or a vast majority will turn out just to heckle the Yankees. That the Astros themselves make it through, and baseball fans unite to try to bring about their reckoning.
Or maybe everyone just cheers really loudly for the Atlanta Braves, because Ronald Acuna is awesome. Much more loudly than they will for Minnesota or Oakland.
Bottom-line, the neutral field concept is laughable. In the case of some prospective matchups, laughably so. Think the Boston Celtics might have a problem if the NBA decided to start selling tickets to local basketball fans just in time for the rest of Eastern Conference Finals against Miami? Or what about the Nuggets, if they all of a sudden had to fight off LeBron fans and the Lakers themselves?
It’s just not a fair ask, when the only advantage for MLB is whatever revenue they can garner from a maximum of fourteen games of ticket sales at reduced capacity. Particularly when you consider those earlier points, and the fact that the AL and NL clubs won’t be on an equal footing. The AL team will be fresh from their own bubble, whereas the NL club in the World Series will at least have had the NLCS to work through some of the initial jitters of having fans in the building again.
Bubble Will Burst Bubble For Yanks. dark. Next
Again, it’s amazing that the season is on track to be completed. For one season only, the spectacle of watching sixteen teams chase a championship should be quite the sight.
But it should be a sight fans are watching safely from home- not in person.