Mike's Mets - When Trying Your Best Just Isn't Good Enough

When Trying Your Best Just Isn't Good Enough

By Mike Steffanos July 06, 2020

It was quite disappointing to see the problems that MLB is having with their testing plan right out of the gate. As Brittany Ghiroli reports in The Athletic, teams have had to delay or cancel workouts because of problems with COVID-19 testing. The problems have ranged from incomplete results coming back from the lab in Utah that MLB has been using to testers not showing up as scheduled on Sunday. The Nationals and Astros were still awaiting test results from Friday. With no plans to lock down the players in a quarantine, MLB's health and safety plan is entirely dependent on frequent testing with rapid results. Quite obviously, they will need to do much better than they have done this past weekend.

Under the current guidelines, players are tested every other day and results are supposed to come back in 24-48 hours. Given the rise in coronavirus infections in many places where MLB teams operate, keeping COVID-19 from shutting down the season was always going to be a huge challenge. If MLB can't get the testing right, they have virtually no chance. They need to get the ship righted quickly. Teams can't afford to miss workout days with such an abbreviated "summer training." Also, we're likely to see more players who are on the fence about playing opt out if the testing delays and mistakes continue.

Joel Sherman at the New York Post acknowledges the high difficulty level of what MLB is attempting to do, but points out the obvious fact that the season can not go forward if these glitches continue. Many of the problems over the weekend were foreseeable. Oakland A's GM David Forst sent a text message out to his players that was a scathing indictment of MLB and the company doing the testing:

"At this point, the blame lies with CDT and MLB and I won't cover for them like I did earlier today. Despite having our schedule a week ahead of time, they didn't alert us to the possibility of any complications around July 4th, and once there were issues, they did nothing to communicate that to us or remedy the situation until Nick (Paparesta, the A’s head athletic trainer) and I forced the issue at various times today. If possible, I'm as frustrated and pissed as you are (well, probably not as pissed as Matt is), and I assure you the rest of the staff is as well."

Apparently a primary reason behind the delays is that no one took into account that it was a holiday weekend. They're using FEDEX to send these tests back and forth from the teams to the lab, and FEDEX doesn't deliver over the holiday weekend unless you upgrade the service. This would be easy to make fun of but, with a program this big, there's always the danger that the weakest link in the chain could mess the whole process up. What needs to happen quickly, however, is for MLB to get testing back on track and eliminate the mistakes.

When word came out Friday afternoon that only 31 players had tested positive, I was pleasantly surprised and relatively optimistic that the number was so low. If they had bothered to mention that a good percentage of the tests had not come back, I definitely wouldn't have been nearly as sanguine about those results. It's been fun over the last few days to read about how well key players like Yoenis Céspedes and Dellin Betances have been progressing, but stuff like that won't really matter if MLB can't get their testing regime as close to airtight as humanly possible. There's still time for them to do this, but they just can't continue to screw up any longer. At the very least MLB will have to delay the start of the season if they keep costing teams precious workout days.

It's not going to be easy to make it through a 60-game season and some playoffs under any circumstances this year. It's going to be nearly impossible if the story continues to be about testing errors and delays.

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