State of the Yankees and MLB

Sam Vercruysse

Currently the Yankees and the entire MLB have been waiting for a solution to start the season. The coronavirus situation within the Yankees minor league system has seemed to cool off and there is nobody in danger at the moment. Several Yankees players have been posting the ways in which they are keeping on top of their game and ready to start the season whenever that time comes. Aroldis Chapman is back in Cuba posting videos of himself doing his workouts and throwing to a catcher on flat ground. New teammates Garrett Cole and Adam Ottavino were throwing together at Cole's home as documented in Cole's Instagram posts earlier this week. One can only hope that Cole is teaching Ottavino how to pitch in the postseason. Gary Sanchez has been posting his catching workouts most recently working on his framing technique and middle infield tandem Gleybor Torres and DJ Lamehieu were posting their workouts in the cage. One can also assume that Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and James Paxton are using their time wisely to rehab their current injuries so that when the season starts the Yankees will be a rare 100% healthy.

The MLB has been working hard to get the season up and running in the near future with the latest plan being thrown around this week. The latest idea has been split the league up and use the spring training facilities in Arizona and possibly Florida too. These areas have been less effected by the virus and it would allow teams to not have to travel far for games. Teams would have to be housed close to the stadiums and only leave the places they are staying to go back and forth to the stadiums. These games would be played with no fans for at least the majority of the season and if they split the leagues to their respective spring training facilities then the teams in your region would be the only teams you'd play for the season. Commissioner Rob Manfred said not to get too excited yet because there are a lot of details to work out still. Another idea that was floating around was to play in Japan with no fans, but some are hesitant to do that since the Japanese league came back recently and then immediately saw three players test positive after playing in their first games. There is still a long road ahead to figure out a perfect solution to this problem, but it seems that the league is moving in the right direction. They seem determined to stick to their plan of bringing baseball back sometime in the month of May.