A baseball hit at a typical home run trajectory travels farther in warmer air, physicist Alan Nathan has shown. A change in temperature of one degree Fahrenheit affects the distance of a batted ball by about four inches, which means a half-degree would matter for two inches, a quarter of a degree for one inch—and baseball, we all know, is a game of inches. In the biggest moments, it’s often a game of even less than that.

Would 2,500 space heaters running nonstop for 3 hours, 46 minutes and 13 seconds have a collective effect on air temperature in a partially enclosed outdoor stadium by one degree Fahrenheit? “It seems plausible to me,” Nathan tells us. “I can’t say that I know with any authori-”

Let’s stop you right there, Nathan. Plausible is enough for us. If humans’ bioenergy could power the machine city in The Matrix, we believe it can power a baseball. It’s an indirect power, not exactly propelling baseballs so much as freeing them to travel more easily through less dense air. And when David Freese hit a baseball to deep right field in the ninth inning of Game 6 of the 2011 World Series, we can believe that the 47,325 Cardinals fans weren’t just wishing that it would carry slightly beyond the reach of Nelson Cruz, but they were actually causing it.

All hail the fan. All hail the crowd.

And now, with the postseason beginning Sept. 29, with an expanded 16-team format that Manfred has no interest in continuing under its current structure, there will be fans to provide authentic crowd noise, beginning with the NLCS on Oct. 12 at 40,300-seat Globe Life Field.

“We are pressing ahead to have fans in Texas,’’ said Manfred, with a ticket sales announcement expected soon. “One of the most important things to our game is the presence of fans. Starting down the path of having fans in stadiums, and in a safe and risk-free environment, is very, very important to our game.’’

Manfred would like the postseason to be expanded from 10 teams in the past to 14 in the future, which was discussed last winter, but not 16. The team with the best record in each league would receive a first-round bye, under MLB’s proposal, while the other two division winners in each league would choose their first-round opponent in the best-of-three-series.

“Look, 16 teams, was a really good solution for the unique environment we had in 2020,’’ Manfred said. “But I want to be clear, when I talked about the expanded playoffs going forward before COVID ever hit, we never talked about 16 teams as a permanent solution. We never talked about more than 14 teams. Those plans addressed marginalizing the value of winning the division, and preserving the competitiveness through the regular season.

“The expanded playoffs cover a vast waterfront, but what we discussed was a very different format than we’re seeing now.’’

So the plan that was hammered out requires all contending clubs — even those at home — to move to a hotel in the last week of the regular season. All players on the 40-man roster and IL will be asked to join that quarantine because once it begins, clubs can no longer summon a player from the alternate site to join the 28-man roster — it will only be those who are in the quarantine.

As teams are eliminated from playoff contention, players on those clubs can leave the hotels if they desire.

The expanded 16-team playoffs will have the best-of-three first round played exclusively in the higher seed’s home stadium. The Division Series and League Championship Series will be played in bubble-like scenarios. The NL playoffs will be contested in Houston and Arlington, Texas at the stadiums of the Astros and Rangers. The AL playoffs will be contested in San Diego and Los Angeles and at the stadiums of the Padres and Dodgers.

The World Series will be played at the new Globe Life Field in Arlington.

Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, fans have not been permitted to attend any regular-season games to date, but Manfred is optimistic that could change by the time the LCS and World Series are played. As Evan Drellich of The Athletic notes, while speaking remotely to the Hofstra business school on Monday, Manfred said the following:

“I’m hopeful that the World Series and the LCS we will have limited fan capacity. I think it’s important for us to start back down the road. Obviously it’ll be limited numbers, socially distanced, protection provided for the fans in terms of temperature checks and the like. Kind of the pods like you saw in some of the NFL games. We’ll probably use that same theory. But I do think it’s important as we look forward to 2021 to get back to the idea that live sports, they’re generally outdoors, at least our games. And it’s something that we can get back to.”

Obviously, MLB owners have strong incentives to get paying customers back in the ballparks as soon as possible. By having no fans in attendance, clubs are missing out on ticket, concession, and parking revenues, and even in an era in which most team revenues are derived from local and national media contracts those are important streams.

On Sunday, the San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres played a doubleheader. They did that because a false positive result on a coronavirus test of a Giants player postponed Friday’s and Saturday’s games.

Alex Dickerson was that player, and multiple tests afterwards — including one at a hospital — proved that he did not, in fact, have the coronavirus.

But that all came after a few reporters had already leaked who the Giants player was, and even “reported” some rumors about irresponsible, protocol-breaking behavior by Dickerson that led to contracting the virus (that, again, he didn’t actually contract).

On Sunday, Dickerson opened up with the media. He confirmed that he was the positive test, and expressed a lot of hurt that the baseless rumors had been printed and perpetuated. Dickerson is presumably a responsible human, and has a wife who is 39 weeks pregnant. He’s been taking the pandemic, and the spread of the virus, very seriously (which is more than a certain member of the Padres who he faced on Sunday can say…).

Dickerson pointed out how harmful it has been to his family, due to the cruel snowballing nature of social media.

Steiner decided he would opt out of the season, just like 22 players throughout the game, including Dodgers veteran starter David Price, unknowing whether he’d ever be back.

“I was prepared to say this is the end of the line,’’ Steiner said. “And if it was the end of the line, it was the pandemic that took me. I could have walked away. I was prepared to walk away into the sunset.

“Then, I get this reprieve from the governor.’’

If Steiner wasn’t going to the broadcast booth, Dodgers executive vice president Lon Rosen decided to bring the broadcast booth to him. Steiner immediately signed off on the idea.

“I feel like an astronaut orbiting the earth,’’ Steiner said. “You know there’s stuff going on down there because I can see it on my control pattern. Really, this could be the wave of the future.

“What do you get being at the ballpark now? You don’t see the players. Can’t talk to anybody. There are no fans. So as long as there is technology, this is great.

“Besides, there are no lines at the urinal at my house.’’

As The Athletic first reported, MLB proposed three options for family to join the players:

Quarantine from near the end of the season through the wild card, then join players in the Division Series via team or private charters.
A one-week quarantine before entering the League Championship bubbles.
No quarantine and the ability to attend games and interact with family at a social distance.

or teams like the Dodgers, who are cited even by competitors as among those organizations that have gone above and beyond the protocols to stay safe, I understand why their players feel like they do not have to do more to compete in the playoffs.

But consider again that MLB has not had a case in 19 of the past 20 days. What about that 20th? One case, as we have learned, is enough to shut down a team for at least five days. If that occurs in the postseason, MLB would have the devilish decision: Do you boot that team from the playoffs or insist that it brings the players who have been training at its alternate site to play the games. Could you imagine the Plan B Dodgers stepping in to try to win the team’s first World Series since 1988?

That is why the best practices must be applied to try to avoid even one October case.

Considering the owners barely wanted to play this 60-game lice infestation of a season to begin with, it hardly seems fair to award the top pick based solely on 2020. That’s especially true of the Red Sox, who have reached deep into the recesses of baseball-reference for pitchers like Mike Kickham, Robinson Leyer, Mitchell Godfrey, Andrew Triggs, and James Conyers, and yes, I made two of those names up, and no, I don’t expect you to know which.

Even accepting that no one anticipated Eduardo Rodriguez missing the season to a COVID-related heart condition, the Red Sox never approached this season with anything resembling a will to win. Ownership tied the hands of chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom all winter, which is how Martin Perez and Jose Peraza end up being the big splashes in free agency.

The entire purpose of the last 11 months has been to cut salary, primarily by trading Mookie Betts and David Price. Had J.D. Martinez opted out, he’d be gone, too. Trying to compete in 2020 never entered the equation.

And yet the Red Sox could be rewarded for it. Manfred, baseball’s commissioner, holds the power to order the 2021 draft however he sees fit, but he’s yet to reveal his intentions. If the order is based simply on 2020 record, the 12-25 Red Sox would currently pick third behind the 10-24 Pirates and 12-25 Angels, losing a tiebreaker with L.A. thanks to a better 2019 record.

“You’re a conductor of sorts,” says Oakland A’s executive producer for ballpark entertainment Amelia Schimmel. “You’re controlling a symphony.”

The crowd noise is crucial to producing an environment that seems, if not normal, then at least normal-ish. It’s important for the players, who aren’t used to performing in dead silence. It’s important for the managers, who don’t want their conversations overheard in the opposing dugout. And it’s important for the broadcasters, who want to create a familiar experience for those watching at home. But normal-ish crowd noise is difficult to approximate—a sea of sound that changes with each pitch.

Think about all the sounds you hear at the ballpark, says Seattle Mariners senior director of productions Ben Mertens. Each game starts with a typical crowd murmur that works as background noise for the whole evening. But even a feature as basic as that murmur is variable—it’s slightly louder when the home team is at bat, and even louder if the game is particularly close, or in the later innings. The stadium crew is constantly adjusting this background noise. And then they get into the work of producing reactions to specific plays.

Miami Marlins second baseman Isan Diaz will be returning to play the remainder of the 2020 Major League Baseball season after he originally opted out of the shortened campaign. MLB and the MLB Players Association reportedly came to an agreement to allow Diaz to rejoin the Marlins, according to Craig Mish of SportsGrid.

After the Marlins suffered a team-wide coronavirus outbreak within the first week of the 2020 season that saw 18 players test positive, Diaz announced Aug. 1 on Instagram that he would be opting out of the season’s final two months. “This has been a tough week to see so many of my teammates come down with the virus, and see how quickly it spreads,” Diaz wrote at the time.

Even the arrival process can be fraught. When righthander Brady Lail was selected off waivers by the Mariners from the White Sox on Aug. 10, his new team was playing in Arlington, Texas, but officials booked him on a commercial flight to their next stop, Houston, to give him time to quarantine. (He was worried about possible exposure to the virus on the plane but was relieved when he had a row to himself in first class.) There was a COVID test waiting for him as he walked into the hotel lobby, and he spent three days locked in his room waiting for the results. The closest he got to human contact was when the bellman left Uber Eats deliveries at his door. The test came back negative, and he took another, rapid one when he joined the team.

Meanwhile, lefthander Brooks Raley was undertaking an even more stressful journey. He spends offseasons in College Station, Texas, so when the Reds traded him to the Astros on Aug. 9, he and his wife, Rachel, decided to take their three young daughters home. That’s a two-and-a-half-hour flight or a 16-hour drive. He heard he’d been traded at 5 or 6 p.m. They packed overnight and loaded the girls—a 3-year-old and twin 11-month-olds—into the car, stopping only twice for gas. They got home in time to put the kids to bed, and Raley was up at 5 the next morning to drive to Houston in time for his 7:30 a.m. rapid test. He waited out the results in a hotel room, then received clearance to report to Minute Maid Park. Seventeen hours after dragging himself out of bed and 46 hours after first buckling his seatbelt, he recorded the final out of the 10th inning against the Giants.

“I did some elbow bumps,” he says.

The New York Mets have had their next two games postponed after two members of the team tested positive for COVID-19, MLB announced on Thursday.

The Mets were initially scheduled to face the Miami Marlins on Thursday, then begin a series against the New York Yankees on Friday, but will now focus on additional coronavirus testing and contact tracing.

The two members of the team to test positive were a player and staff member, according to Newsday’s Tim Healey.

The Mets later released a statement saying the team plans to fly back to New York from Miami on Thursday night, but without the two members who tested positive and anyone who has been traced to be in close contact with them. The group exposed to the virus will remain in Miami.

Manager Bud Black provided an update on a number of subjects Tuesday morning before the Rockies’ dropped their second consecutive 2-1 game at Houston, including information on the status of No. 3 catcher Elias Diaz.

Diaz was placed on the restricted list Monday for violating team protocols. Black said that Diaz, who traveled with the team to Houston, has been sent back to Denver. Black would not specify the reasons why Diaz was placed on the restricted list, but The Denver Post has learned that Diaz violated coronavirus protocols around the team hotel in Houston.

“There was a violation that occurred and we felt that Elias had to be away from the team,” Black said, adding that the team has continued its standard testing for the virus.

During a testy meeting Friday, Cleveland Indians players scolded teammates Mike Clevinger and Zach Plesac for breaking protocol and going out in Chicago, and at least one player said he would opt out of the season if the two remained on the active roster, sources familiar with the meeting told ESPN.

Clevinger and Plesac, two-fifths of the Indians’ rotation that has a major league-best 2.43 earned-run average, were optioned to Cleveland’s alternate site and will spend at least 10 days away from the major league team. While some teammates accepted their apologies and preferred they remain with the Indians, sources said, the anger over their actions was palpable enough to lead to the demotions—ones that, if they last for a specific period of time, could have significant financial implications.

Indians players’ disappointment centered not only on the decision made by Clevinger and Plesac to leave the team hotel in Chicago on Aug. 7 but their action afterward. Some players, sources said, believed Clevinger was not truthful with them about his involvement before he boarded the team plane Aug. 9. By then, Plesac, who had been caught trying to return to the hotel early the morning of Aug. 8, had been sent back to Cleveland. His attempted explanation this week in an Instagram video during which he was driving further bothered teammates, sources said.

After one Cincinnati Reds player tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday night, the team sat in a holding pattern while awaiting more test results.

The wait will continue for at least one more day. The Reds were optimistic about playing a doubleheader against the Pittsburgh Pirates on Monday because both teams shared an off day, but that was called off by Sunday afternoon.

“MLB has decided protocol-wise that they did not want us to play Monday,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton told Pittsburgh reporters. “What goes into that decision happens a lot higher than me. They just informed us that we’re not going to play Monday, and we’ll reschedule.”

There were no additional positive tests with the Reds on Saturday, an official with knowledge of the results told The Enquirer. It can, however, take a couple of days for other people to test positive after they were exposed to an infected person. The St. Louis Cardinals initially had two players test positive when they postponed their first game. Four days later and they totaled 13 positive tests.

Major League Baseball has had preliminary discussions about holding its postseason in a bubble-type format after the coronavirus outbreaks on the St. Louis Cardinals and Miami Marlins that wreaked havoc on the regular-season schedule illustrated how a similar scenario could upend the playoffs, sources familiar with the conversations told ESPN.

Although a fully contained bubble similar to the NBA setup at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida, would be difficult for MLB to replicate, a multicity format that replicates the NHL’s Toronto and Edmonton, Alberta, hubs has gained traction, sources said.

Because of MLB’s expansion to 16 playoff teams, the league would need at least three hubs to complete its wild-card round before shrinking to a two-hub format for the division series. The league championship series and World Series could be held at one or two stadiums. Remaining in one metropolitan area would allow teams to avoid air travel and perhaps remain at a single hotel for the entire postseason, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 27.

Southern California, the greater Chicago area and the New York metropolitan area would make the most sense because of the available stadiums, sources said. Concerns about weather in late September and deep into October make the Los Angeles area the most logical choice to host an entire postseason, though the sources cautioned that because of the nascent nature of discussions, no favorite has emerged.

The Mets announced Monday that right-hander Marcus Stroman has opted out of the remainder of the 2020 season. The right-hander, who is a free agent at season’s end, called the move a family decision and cited the many “uncertainties” and “unknowns” of playing in the current health-and-safety atmosphere.

The Cincinnati Reds want fans to come back to Great American Ball Park.

Cincinnati submitted an official plan for the return of Reds fans this season to Major League Baseball, the state of Ohio, the city of Cincinnati, and Hamilton County, according to C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic.

Both the city and county have approved the plan, albeit “with lots of conditions,” a source told Rosecrans. MLB and Ohio have yet to respond.

The plan, if implemented, allows a portion of fans to return in either September or for the playoffs, the source told Rosecrans. Details of the plan, such as to how many fans are allowed into the stadium, are unknown. Great American Ball Park’s capacity is 42,319.

The Cleveland Indians sent home starter Zach Plesac after he violated team rules by leaving the hotel to go out in Chicago Saturday night, a source confirmed to ESPN.

The Athletic first reported the news on Plesac, who now will be quarantined for 72 hours back in Cleveland.

Plesac drove back to Cleveland in a rental car, a source told ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

The accepted explanation around the league is that the bubble concept was left on the drawing room floor because the players were not on board with the idea. One source, who indicated that the owners are responsible for much of what ails the league, said this aspect of the season falls on the players. Another nodded to the length of the season as a reason why players objected.

A few players were vocal about their reservations, including Mike Trout, the Los Angeles Angels outfielder who doubles as the sport’s best player and de facto face.

“[Being] quarantined in a city, I was reading for—if we play— a couple of months, it would be difficult for some guys. What are you going to do with family members?” said Trout, whose wife Jessica recently gave birth to the couple’s first child. “[The] mentality is that we want to get back as soon as we can. But it has to be realistic. It can’t be sitting in our hotel rooms, and just going from the field to the hotel room and not being able to do anything. I think that’s pretty crazy.”

The players’ reluctance to leave their families behind for months at a time was understandable. So was their optimism that the country’s pandemic response would allow for improved traveling conditions later in the year, paving the way for a season that was shorter but more conventional.

“I think it would be a weird product on the field, guys wouldn’t be as motivated, we’d be playing in 100 degrees in the summer of Arizona,” Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Ross Stripling said. “Why don’t we wait a month, get it to more of a safer place, and play a little bit less games.”

Friday’s series opener between the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals has been postponed after a St. Louis player tested positive for COVID-19, according to Major League Baseball.

In total, eight Cardinals players have tested positive for the coronavirus since last week.

MLB said the postponed game would allow for additional testing and contact tracing. A source told ESPN’s Jesse Rogers that the remainder of the three-game series also was in jeopardy.

The Cardinals have not played since July 29 because of positive coronavirus tests. The team previously announced that it had returned 13 positive tests from its traveling party, with seven of them coming from players.

The memo, obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday night, says that repeated or flagrant violators of the protocols could be banned from participating in the 2020 season and postseason.

That includes those who don’t wear face coverings while watching from the dugout. Although such measures were suggested in MLB’s operations manual before Wednesday, some players have continued to not wear face masks, offer high fives, spit and violate the protocols in other ways during games.

Umpires are also being instructed to wear face masks at all times, except when it would make it unfeasible for them to do their jobs.

Compliance officers have been appointed for each team, and they have been charged with enforcing protocols outlined in the operations manual in an effort to keep baseball’s season running.

Rethinking gathering spots

The Los Angeles Angels had their first night off on the road on July 25 in Oakland. The players and coaches ordered food and staged a casual, socially distant gathering. Angels manager Joe Maddon said it was “pretty cool, actually.” The experience prompted Maddon to speak with the team’s traveling secretary, Tom Taylor, about booking two additional large rooms—one for the players, one for the coaches—so they could gather in groups to wind down after road games.

“Maybe that will satiate their desires to go elsewhere,” Maddon said.

Hanging out in the clubhouse

Ideally, players would be dressed in full uniform before their arrival at the ballpark, but MLB understood the unlikelihood of that from the onset. The key is to maximize the amount of time players spend outdoors, which has prompted teams to make their clubhouses as unwelcoming as possible. Angels starter Dylan Bundy arrived at the visiting clubhouse on July 24 in Oakland and realized that all the couches were gone.

“It’s the bare necessities in there,” he said. “It’s your clothes and locker, and that’s about it.”

The team has vehemently denied that they have any evidence of the players breaking from protocols while on the road trip. Major League Baseball has concurred with this view, according to two sources outside of the Cardinals organization.

“I have no factual reason to believe that is true and I have not seen any proof of that,” said John Mozeliak, president of baseball operations, when asked directly by the Post-Dispatch about the casino report. “If they were at a casino though, that would be disappointing.”

Cardinals manager Mike Shildt said Wednesday that the team has traced the genesis of the outbreak back to an outside individual who was asymptomatic when he had contact with a member of the club. “Brought it into our clubhouse,” Shildt said. From there, the virus spread through practices that the Cardinals have also internally addressed.

MLB rosters will be reduced from 30 players to 28 starting Thursday and remain at that number for the rest of the season and postseason, sources confirmed to ESPN.

The initial plan had been to reduce the roster to 28 this week before reducing it again to 26 after another two weeks. However the recent outbreak of positive COVID-19 tests led to a change in plans..

The taxi squad will also be expanded from three players to five, sources confirmed.