When an empty stadium isn’t really an empty stadium

Many of the various proposals that have Major League Baseball reopening for 2020 include at least starting the season with no fans in the stands, an attempt to limit or avoid the spread of coronavirus.

But even with no fans, major league games involve scores of people in addition to the players and coaches.

Angels president John Carpino was among the executives Mike DiGiovanna interviewed for the Los Angeles Times. Carpino outlined the though process behind planning for potential games at Angel Stadium:

“It becomes a math model — the more people you have, the greater risk of someone either having the virus or spreading the virus,” Carpino said. “I’ve been looking at how we could do this without fans, and you keep thinking, ‘We don’t need anybody.’

“Then you’re like, what about security? Oh yeah. What about cooks in the clubhouse dining room? Oh yeah. What about a statistician? Oh yeah. What about a video guy? Oh yeah. Before you know it, you have three dozen oh yeahs. I don’t know how to attack it, almost.”

To date, 17 games at Angel Stadium have been postponed, including one Freeway Series exhibition against the Dodgers. By the end of May, we will be at 29 home games missed, and should the shutdown continue through June that would mean 41 Angel Stadium dates missed, including 40 Angels regular season home games.

Links

• Shohei Ohtani tops Rhett Bollinger’s list of top all-time Angels international prospects at MLB.com.
• The average MLB salary when rosters were frozen on March 28 was $4,432,530, up slightly from 2019, wrote Ronald Blum at the Associated Press.
• Grant Brisbee at The Athletic compiled rosters full of ‘Wait-they-were-on-that-team?’ players for every MLB team. Among his Angels were Frank Robinson, Eddie Murray, and Luis Tiant.