When I look at these standings, one burning question pops into my head: Why?

At 50 games, the ability to meaningfully differentiate between the great and the good, the mediocre and the bad, starts to fade significantly. There’s a one-in-five chance that the winner of the World Series will be a team believed to be .500 or worse. In the last ZiPS projected standings before everything went sideways, that probability was right around 3%; it was 3.7% before the 2019 season.

On Friday morning, the Charleston RiverDogs, the Yankees’ low Class A affiliate in the South Atlantic League, released a document detailing exactly how they plan to modify operations at Joseph P. Riley Park for the new version of normal created by COVID-19.

There will still be three outs in an inning, three strikes to an out and four balls to a walk, but just about everything else at the park will look and feel markedly different.

Buying tickets, food and merchandise will be an entirely cashless operation. Doing so limits contact between employees and fans, and thus limits one potential avenue for the virus to spread.

The team will also close select ticket windows to help maintain social distancing requirements. These new guidelines also mark a halt on physical tickets. All tickets will now be emailed to fans’ mobile devices. The exception to the rule regards group or season-ticket holders, who will have the option of contactless ticket pickup.

No tickets will be printed or handed out on-site.

Once in the park, fans—aside from family members—will not be seated next to one another. The RiverDogs plan to create an updated seating manifest that, while reducing the amount of fans allowed through the gates, will keep the required social distance between fans.

..“We’re going to lose billions of dollars this year, no matter what,” said one high-ranking baseball official, who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss internal matters. “People don’t realize the magnitude of the losses, but they’re huge.”..

...A high-ranking baseball official confirmed the Marlins are “behind the 8-ball” due largely to their debt but predicted all 30 teams “should be okay.” Some teams, the official said, are “maxing out” credit lines and taking on more debt. Forbes reported Friday that MLB “modestly” increased its leaguewide lending capacity for individual teams…