Reese Kaplan -- Weird Opening Day Weekend is in the Books

It’s another day and word comes down that four starting Florida Marlins are now on the special IL list for people who have become personally infected with the coronavirus.  Now no one who is any kind of baseball fan had projected the Marlins to be more than batting practice competing teams.  Still, imagine what it would be like if we learned that Wilson Ramos, Pete Alonso, Jeff McNeil and Jacob deGrom reported the same way?  Now you get a feel for the impact of what the Marlins revealed today.  

Now this season will contain routine baseball injuries and the corresponding recovery time will leave teams flat in the more “normal” fashion of the IL.  The Astros learned today that Justin Verlander is out for the entire 60-game season due to the recovery necessary for elbow problems.  Considering the season is normally 162 games in length means that there’s precious little time for players to recover with the abbreviated 60-game schedule.  

What will be interesting to witness is how various teams choose to deal with their unplanned and unexpected roster vacancies.  In any other year the usual course of action would be reaching down into your minor leagues to get either an underdeveloped youngster or a hanger-on type of older ballplayer to take the place of whomever is missing.  

In 2020, things are a bit different.  There are no minor league operations whatsoever.  Instead we have the 30-man regular roster and a 30-man taxi squad.  Now some clubs chose to fill that unusual 30-man traveling circus with their upper level minor leaguers.  Others reached into the available pool of unsigned former major leaguers who realized that a taxi squad was the closest they would get to the over-the-hill minor league deal since those contracts are not to be had in 2020.  

Of course, there are plenty of players with talent who tried to secure a spot who failed to do so.  With the Mets alone you saw the departure (voluntarily) of Matt Adams who was a legitimate hitter.  Then they cut ties with Melky Cabrera and Gordon Beckham.  Stephen Gonsalves and Jacob Rhame were others who had outside shots at being on the second tier squad but wound up elsewhere.  

Similarly, you saw very late into the second pre season that the Mets were able to snag a few known players like Juan Lagares and Brian Dozier.  Both were cut loose from their intended teams.  Say what you will about strong fielder and runner Lagares, but Dozier is a hitter who has slugged as many as 42 HRs in a single season.  I certainly feel better about him as a spare filler than I would about Gordon Beckham.  

What’s really going to be interesting for the Mets is watching the luxury of a rookie manager having a practice season in which to prove what he can do.  No matter what the end results are, no one is going to set off fireworks nor burn him in effigy.  It’s only a dozen times around the Stroman-less and Thor-less pitching rotation.  What we want to see are wins, of course, but really the important thing is witnessing how he handles the DH, how he manages in extra inning scenarios, what he does when the bullpen is shaky, how he juggles the lineup and, of course, how he shapes the rosters as needs require changes to be made.