By this date, we were supposed to be seeing how Pete Alonso, Jeff McNeil, Jacob deGrom and other New York Mets‘ stars rounded into form with the 2020 season in mind. Now, because of COVID-19 concerns, Major League Baseball halted its operations and pushed back the start of the season “at least” for a couple of weeks.
Given the state of the pandemic, the most likely scenario is that the aforementioned two-week timetable will fall well short of what will be needed to have the appropriate conditions to play ball.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended no gatherings of 50 or more people for the next eight weeks. If Major League Baseball adheres to those guidelines, it would mean that no games will be played before mid-May, at least with fans in the stadium. And that’s not counting some sort of preparation period, as an abbreviated spring training.
The Mets and the waiting game
While it is a somewhat common occurrence in other sports to play games with no fans in attendance, it’s hard to imagine MLB contests under those circumstances at this stage. It seems like the Mets, and the rest of the teams will have to wait.
Taking all of this into account, the most realistic scenario is that we can see the possibility of the New York Mets playing MLB games in June at the earliest. Any date before that is just too difficult to project, no matter what MLB says.
The coronavirus pandemic is still in its growing phase. Yes, China, the country of its origin, has managed to somewhat control the spread of the disease, but each passing day, more countries announce new infections. The death toll keeps growing. The world needs to focus on stopping the pandemic, and then everything else will fall into place.
All we have to do is stay at home, if possible, and have loads of patience. We miss baseball, and we certainly want to see the Mets, but games will be back when it’s a more appropriate time.