First, prayers to all those being impacted by COVID-19.
As far as baseball goes here are some thoughts and questions:
- How do you handle the injury list? The average length of time to recovery for COVID-19 is 2 weeks for mild and 3-6 weeks for severe cases. Adding 72 hours to the end of the disease per CDC and that means that the player would not be able to play baseball for 17-45 days. The rules would have to allow for a lot more non-baseball injuries and not force all those people to the 60-day DL.
- There might be wholesale changes in a roster if a hotspot occurred. As has been postulated, you would need AT LEAST a 37 player roster and maybe up to 60 players assuming that you could have anywhere from 50-100% of your roster having COVID-19 during an outbreak. That doesn't even injuries and other forms of leave away from baseball.
- Bench personnel might be required to wear masks all the time and what has become a tradition (pitchers and catchers holding their gloves over their mouths so they can't be lipread, might be mandatory.
- Baseball, itself, has to remain somewhat normal. For example, are we going to require homeplate umpires and catchers to wear shields over their facemasks? What about batters using helmets similar to what they use in little league, with a face shield?
- Will pitchers be able to go to their mouths at all?
- Will batters, catchers, etc. be able to spit? Can you spit out the sunflower shells? Can there be communal pin tar? Will each pitcher have his own rosin bag?
- Will teams have the handshake/high 5 lines after games?
NOTE: I guess a lot of this will come from the continuous COVID-19 testing that will have to be done so maybe the last three points will be non-issues. Still tests aren't perfect and there is some thought that you can be infected before the test will show you are infected so who knows.
- How will watch parties be handled if no fans can't go to games?
- None of this even covers whether baseball-related injuries will be greater this year because of the change to the playing season.
In any case, with or without fans, if the game can be played safely, it would be great to see baseball again.
