A's Told To End Spring Training Camp After One Optional Workout

Players are being told they can return home, stay in the Phoenix area or can move on to Oakland after MLB disbands spring camps.

On Friday the A’s held an optional workout for their players in the wake of Spring Training Cactus League games being cancelled as part of Major League Baseball’s dealing with the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

There won’t be an optional workout Saturday, or any time in the near future. After a face-to-face meeting with officials from the Major League Baseball Players Association, MLB announced the immediate cessation of spring training camps.

Players have been told they can elect to return home, remain in their Spring Training cites (some of them have those areas as their permanent dwelling) or head to the club’s home city, in the case Oakland and the East Bay.

Already the final 10 days of Cactus League games had been scratched and the first two weeks of the regular season had been pushed back two weeks until at least April 9.

This is in line with general precautions and best practices recommended by public health experts.

The A’s were scheduled to start the regular season on March 26 with the first of a four-game set against the Minnesota Twins, followed by three games against the Houston Astros. All seven of those games were to be held at the Coliseum in Oakland.

Although it wasn’t specifically addressed in the announcements made by MLB, it seems likely that even if players work out on their own, there will have to be some period of collective team workouts would have to take place.

In 1989, when the World Series between the A’s and San Francisco Giants was disrupted for 10 days by the Loma Prieta earthquake, both the A’s and Giants retreated to Arizona for the better part of a week to make sure their games were sharp before returning to Candlestick Park for Game 3 of the Series on Oct. 27.

That’s not to say the pandemic and the earthquake are analogous, but 1989 does show that clubs don’t believe they can just take more than a couple of days off to feel confident they’re ready to play at their best.

So, it’s all but certain there will be a second spring training, and while it’s impossible to say when it will start, its length will be determined by how much time teams have missed.