Blue Jays: Will MLB be able to maintain competitive integrity?

With the Blue Jays having their weekend series postponed and three other teams also idle, will MLB be able to maintain competitive integrity?

I’ll admit that I feared the worst when the news about the Miami Marlins’ Covid-19 outbreak was announced. It seemed like a nightmare scenario for the league, and yet it was reported that there were no discussions of shutting down the season, at least not yet. For the time being, the Marlins won’t be playing and with half of their roster testing positive, they will have to make some roster adjustments when the league determines that they can resume. The same goes for the Philadelphia Phillies, who were in the midst of a series with Marlins at the time of the outbreak, and will have their season paused out of an “abundance of caution” as well.

The issue has now directly affected two other teams, as both the Toronto Blue Jays and Baltimore Orioles now won’t be playing games this weekend, unless the league office decides to make a last minute change to the schedule. So far the trickle down effect has only hit four teams, but it’s now blatantly obvious how quickly things can change for the 2020 season.

And that raises another important question: Can the league actually maintain competitive integrity?

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That’s a difficult question to answer, and it’s hard to know where the line would be for something like that. Competitive integrity is a phrase that’s been used by Rob Manfred as they’ve talked about what needs to happen in order for this season to be played, and I have to think that it’s already come in to question.

The league has said that there is a possible scenario where not every team plays all 60 of their games. For the sake of argument, let’s say that ends up being the case for the Marlins, who will be quite a bit behind the rest of the league when they’re able to continue. Here are the problems I see with that scenario:

• It’s not exactly fair for the Marlins (or any other team it could happen to), as they’ll now be forced to fill out their roster from the 60-man group they started with. They were already expected to struggle in the AL/NL East against several teams that should compete for a playoff spot, and this isn’t going to help.
• For those teams that get to play them while their roster is compromised, they’re at an advantage. It’s hard to say how long that advantage will last, and how many teams could play against a compromised Marlins’ roster, but it will change the degree of difficulty for teams to beat them.
• For those that have their games outright cancelled, they’ll miss the chance to pick up some of the easier wins in their schedule. For example the Blue Jays are supposed to play the Marlins for a two game series from Aug 11-12. If those games happen, the Blue Jays likely get a slight advantage over teams that will play them later this summer. If they don’t, they could miss the chance to pick up some important wins against one of the weaker teams in their division.
• According to MLB on Fox’s Ken Rosenthal, there have been legitimate discussions about covering games by playing two, 7-inning games to cover a double-header. That’s less than ideal.

Let’s also address another point that seems obvious, even if the league would never admit it. If this terrible scenario had happened to a contender like the Dodgers, Yankees, or another of the big-budget super teams, I imagine the discussion would be a lot different. Fortunately for the league, the Marlins were not expected to contend this year anyway, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be consequences to the standings as a result of half of their roster testing positive for Covid-19.

For the time being I don’t know that it’s enough to derail the MLB season, but this situation has quickly reminded us about the potential for disaster. The league is having to make several decisions on the fly, so we’ll see what happens as they try to reschedule the postponed games for this weekend, and how it will ultimately effect things at the end of the season, assuming we get there. The integrity of the results could already be somewhat compromised, and there’s potential for things to get a whole lot worse.