Most Mariners players opt to stay in Arizona after MLB suspends spring training camps

Friday was a very unusual day in baseball.

Perhaps, in some ways, more unusual than Thursday, when MLB officially announced it would cancel all spring training games and delay Opening Day until at least April 9 due to growing coronavirus concerns nationwide.

Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto met with players Friday morning, breaking players into groups of roughly 20-25 at a time, to outline the light workouts the club would participate in over the weekend as they started to plan what was now an extended spring camp without games.

He returned three hours later to tell them something completely different — after a meeting with the MLB Players Association, MLB had decided to immediately suspend all spring training camps in both Arizona and Florida.

“Obviously very disappointing that we have to effectively pull the plug on spring training, but considering the circumstances it’s the appropriate measure,” Dipoto said.

Major league players were given three options by the league — they could return home, return to their club’s home city, or remain in the cities where their spring training facilities are located to participate in informal workouts.

“I don’t think any of us — and I guess me particularly — was naturally trained for crisis management,” Dipoto said. “This was a crash course in how we are going to deal with it. Mostly we wanted to communicate with our players on a human level. We care about them and we want to keep them safe. We’ve tried as best we create safety in this environment.

“It was a trying day. It was a day that took a lot of twists and turns. ... We have been very transparent with the players to keep them in the loop with what we are doing.”

The Mariners have tried to be as player-friendly as they can be, Dipoto said, and have encouraged players to make the decision that’s best for them.

Dipoto said the club asked the players in big league camp to give them an answer by noon Saturday, and of the 49 players in major league camp, only three — including one on the 40-man roster — have decided to leave the Phoenix area and return home.

“We have at present about 43 who have already confirmed they are staying,” Dipoto said. “The others were going to go home and talk to their families. We are going to have a big group one way or the other.

“That could change because people are people, and they have the ability to change their minds, but right now, we’re pretty excited about the fact that the players want to stay together, and frankly we think that’s probably a good thing for the health and well-being of the group.”

Players who require rehab for various injuries were also invited to stay, and Dipoto believes all of them have taken advantage of that option. Minor league players, with the exception of those in big league camp, were sent home.

“It’s a lot of players and we have no real target date for start of their season,” Dipoto said. “For the most part, that’s a very young group we didn’t want to put in a difficult position.

“It’s also very difficult to manage smaller groups coming and going with that kind of volume. Nor did we feel it was wise to choose some to stay and some to send home. We thought that would be unfair.”

Mariners manager Scott Servais, as well as most of the big league staff, and several members from the strength, training and player development ranks live in the Phoenix area and will remain at the facility to help. Dipoto is also staying.

Their Peoria facility will be shut down Saturday for a deep cleaning, and non-essential personnel, including media members, will not be allowed on the premises for however long this extended stay in Arizona lasts.

Dipoto said the Mariners will carry on with their earlier plan of breaking players into small groups for workouts as a precaution. He does not believe anyone in Seattle’s camp has been tested for coronavirus, though players have been instructed to contact one of the team’s trainers if they do show symptoms to either coordinate an appointment with a physician in the Phoenix area or instruct the player to stay home until symptoms resolve.

Following Saturday’s deep cleaning, players will return to the facility Sunday. The club has discussed limiting workouts to a couple of hours each day, focusing on the essentials — getting in the weight room, taking care of treatments with trainers, taking swings in the batting cage and allowing pitchers to resume throwing bullpens.

The Mariners are not planning any on-field activity for the foreseeable future, but will ramp up once they feel more comfortable with managing the current situation.

“Because we do have a large group of players staying, we do feel strongly that the wise thing from a health and wellness perspective is to keep it to smaller groups,” Dipoto said. “If it’s more than 40, we’ll break it in two and perhaps into three different subsets of players and schedule workouts that don’t cross over.

“We think that might be wiser with all that we know about this virus.”

It will look similar to what the club does in January, before spring camp officially begins.

“We are preparing like we are in the early days of spring, and we are going to continue to maintain the levels we’ve built with our players to this point,” Dipoto said. “We aren’t going to build on to anything. We aren’t going to increase workload.

“We are just going to try and keep players where they are so they don’t lose the foundation that they’ve built to this point. But, we have no expectation of playing anytime soon.”

This story was originally published March 13, 2020 at 5:26 PM.

Lauren Smith

The News Tribune

360-754-5473

Lauren Smith is a sports reporter at The News Tribune. She has covered high school sports for TNT and The Olympian, as well as the Seattle Mariners and Washington Huskies. She is a graduate of UW and Emerald Ridge High School.