Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said there is no cut-and-dry plan for MLB's return from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic despite the reported scenarios that have surfaced over the past couple weeks.
Manfred instead chose to characterize those possibilities as a few among a bevy of possible ideas and contingencies discussed between the league and the MLB Players' Association.
"Plans may be too strong of a word. Ideas may be a better word," Manfred said in an interview Tuesday on the Fox Business Network. "All of them are designed to address limitations that may exist when businesses restart. Traveling limitations. Limitations on mass gatherings that may still exist. We thought about ways to try to make baseball available to all the fans across the United States in the face of those restrictions."
MLB has been on hold since March 12, when Manfred suspended spring training 10 days early and indefinitely postponed the start of the season.
Several potential ways for the league to resume action have been reported since. Most recently among them include having all 30 teams quarantined in Phoenix and play in front of empty stadiums or that teams will play at their spring training sites with a one-year realignment in divisions based on geography.
However, Manfred said nothing is close to being official.
"From our perspective, we don't have a plan," Manfred said. "We have lots of ideas. What ideas come to fruition depends on what the restrictions are, what the public health situation is, but we are intent on the idea of making baseball a part of the economic recovery and sort of a milestone on the return to normalcy."
Normalcy might not be close yet.
Right now, based on recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the earliest possible resumption baseball activities is mid-May. Factor in the likely need for a mini training camp of sorts to get players ready, and real games probably aren't starting until June if everything goes right.
Manfred has previously said that a full 162-game schedule is "probably not" happening. The league will also likely have to be creative with regular-season and postseason schedules. Seven-inning doubleheaders are a possibility that will garner discussion.
"The only real decision that we have made, the only real plan that we have is that baseball is not going to return until the public health situation has improved to the point that we're comfortable, that we can play games in a manner that's safe for our players, our employees, our fans and in a way that will not impact the public health situation adversely," Manfred said. "So, right now, it's largely a waiting game. During that period, as you might expect, any business will be engaged in contingency planning. We thought about how we might be able to return in various scenarios, but again, the key is the improvement in the public health situation."
