Major League Baseball is set to being its abbreviated season in a couple weeks. But there are still questions about how the league is responding to Covid-19. Sports Illustrated host Robin Lundberg discussed some of these issues with SI's Stephanie Apstein and got the perspective of Max Goodman from Inside the Pinstripes who has been around the New York Yankees since they resumed activities to prepare for the return to play.
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00:00 Major League Baseball is set to return, but not without some concern.
00:05 For more on that, I'm joined by our Stephanie Avstein and Max Goodman of Inside the Pinstripes.
00:10 Stephanie, let's start with you. You think MLB has a problem when it comes to transparency and also the timing of test results?
00:17 Yeah, I think that MLB is too incentivized to make it seem like this is going well.
00:24 And so they released some test results last week that were very incomplete.
00:30 Like a third of the teams at least had not even finished their testing when MLB released results that made it seem like things were going really well.
00:36 I think that the move here is to appoint a third party who can oversee this.
00:42 Now Max, you've actually been out with the Yankees. How has the team itself received MLB's plan and the feeling around a return?
00:51 Well, the Yankees are a World Series frontrunner and they're getting ready for this 60-game sprint that starts in a couple weeks.
00:58 But questions about COVID-19 have popped up pretty much every single day in these unorthodox Zoom interviews.
01:06 Garrett Cole has a son that's just about a week old. He seems to be confident that everything will go according to plan with the MLB's extensive health and safety protocols.
01:17 Aaron Judge said that there's risk everywhere, even if you just go outside of your house.
01:22 So he seems to understand what he and his teammates have gotten into.
01:26 And then there was a report from The Athletic that the Yankees didn't have a tester present on Sunday.
01:30 And after a few questions, Aaron Boone, I don't think he was necessarily fed up because this is obviously an ever-present topic this season.
01:38 But he said he doesn't really want to get into the fact that test results are going to be coming in on different days.
01:44 The Yankees have two players that have already tested positive and that's subject to change as well.
01:48 So I think there's a lot of uncertainty that they can necessarily get this done.
01:52 But the players are also trying to be as confident as they can and then focus on baseball.
01:57 And Stephanie, you mentioned being incentivized. Obviously, the Yankees are incentivized given their position.
02:02 But, you know, Rob Manfred has been steadfast here.
02:05 Do you think there's anything that would derail baseball, even if you think maybe the cooler heads should consider that?
02:13 Well, I think that's part of the problem, that even if there is an outbreak, a study published last month suggested that 45 percent of COVID patients could be asymptomatic.
02:24 So it could make pretty strong headway through the league before the public is aware of it if we don't have more honest data.
02:33 And so I think it's hard to know what would shut the league down if we are not actually sure what's going on at any moment.
02:39 And of course, we know they aren't revealing the test results without permission from those who are tested.
02:46 Stephanie, Max, appreciate your time, as always.
02:49 Thanks.
02:50 Thanks.
02:50 [BLANK_AUDIO]