MLB suspends spring training

Major League Baseball made the only decision that made sense Thursday: Suspending the rest of the spring training schedule and likely delaying opening day. It’s been a whirlwind week for baseball and sports in general as the country wrestles with the outbreak of coronavirus and how to protect players and fans. We’ve seen the NBA and MLS suspend their seasons, almost every conference tournament in the NCAA get canceled and drastic changes to March Madness.

Baseball was among the last dominoes to fall. ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports that the league is expected to announce the decision Thursday afternoon after a conference call with owners. Operations would cease Friday, as many of Thursday’s games in Florida were already underway. In a matter of four days, MLB went from issuing policies to limit clubhouse access to a full-scale shutdown of spring training. With opening day scheduled for two weeks from Thursday, this leaves a lot of unanswered questions for baseball fans — some that simply can’t be answered right now. Here’s what we know currently about the shutdown of baseball and what to expect next.

What does this mean for the start of the regular season? In short: We don’t know yet. It would make sense, now that baseball has suspended games, to wait out the coronavirus scare and begin the season at a time that is deemed safe by everyone. It’s unclear whether MLB’s announcement will cover all of that ground, but reports indicate that players are expecting the season to be delayed. Realistically, if you have tickets to see your favorite team on opening day, don’t tattoo your seat number on your arm.

What are MLB’s options for reshaping its season? We’ve already heard talk of MLB wanting to move regular-season games to avoid places where coronavirus is more common. Seattle, for instance. MLB could decide to swap home and away cities. In the case of the Mariners, that would mean playing the season-opening series in Texas against the Rangers instead of Seattle. Another option is keeping everybody in their spring complexes and starting the season there. That plan was floated two days ago, but so much has happened to sports in the last two days, it’s also fair to wonder what happens in two days and then two days after that. The situation will remain fluid, like most everything coronavirus related.

Could MLB shorten its season? Compared to the NBA, one advantage MLB has is a big runway in front of it. There are two weeks before a 162-game season starts. That’s plenty of room for tinkering. If baseball wanted to hold off its season for a few extra weeks and scale back the schedule to 150 games, for instance, it wouldn’t really hinder things too much. Heck, it could be looked at as an experiment for what a shorter MLB season would look like for players, fans and ownership, since that’s something that’s been proposed in recent years.

What happens to players now? According to Joel Sherman of the New York Post, MLB will ask players to stay at their spring complexes, but it won’t be a requirement. This jibes with what we in the lead up to this decision. One MLB executive told The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal that he expected teams to bunker down in their spring training complexes and continue with light workouts until there’s a firm resolution. It was also reported Thursday by Andy Martino of SNY that many players are in their spring complexes just waiting to be told what to do next.

What else have teams been doing to stay healthy? Numerous teams have pulled their scouts off the road amid coronavirus fears. When news of this broke Wednesday, it was the first indication that a full-scale shutdown of MLB was likely on the way. Yankees GM Brian Cashman explained why Thursday.

Has baseball seen anything like this before?

Sort of, though under far different circumstances. In 1995, after the strike ended, players were fast-tracked into the season with a shorter spring training and extra roster allowances once games started. That could provide something of a blueprint for a re-ramping up of the season. The fact that this is happening in spring training allows teams to keep preparation relatively under control, compared to if players were spread around the world at their offseason homes.

https://sports.yahoo.com/mlb-suspends-spring-training-questions-answers-and-whether-opening-day-will-happen-181651412.html

NHL suspends season amid coronavirus outbreak

PHOENIX, Ariz. — NHL commissioner Gary Bettman reached out to clubs Thursday morning to tell them the regular season would be suspended due to the spread of the coronavirus, a source indicated to The Post. The official announcement came after 1 p.m. call to work out some of the details on what is a very fluid situation. The league had already cancelled morning skates and practices Thursday morning, and they told teams to start working with their buildings to find dates to host games into July. An official announcement was expected later Thursday afternoon. “Our goal is to resume play as soon as it is appropriate and prudent, so that we will be able to complete the season and award the Stanley Cup. Until then, we thank NHL fans for your patience and hope you stay healthy,” the league said in a statement.

The league made this inevitable decision in the wake of the NBA announcing the suspension of its season Wednesday night while games were still going on. A big difference was an NBA player, Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz, tested positive on Wednesday for the virus. As of Thursday afternoon, no NHL player was known to have the virus. Because NHL locker rooms are filled with hot and sweaty equipment, every year teams have flu bugs run through their team. There have also been more serious instances of contagious illness in the past, such as when the mumps went around in 2014 — Penguins star Sidney Crosby contracted it and his face ballooned.

It’s not easy to sanitize a sport in which people work in such close proximity, but that is what the league tried to do late last week when they made the recommendation that teams close their locker rooms to the media. For a few days, players and coaches were brought to designated interview areas where there was ample distance between them and the media. It was a strange scenario, and as much as the teams tried to focus on the task at hand, the big picture was impossible to ignore.

“Obviously we’re looking,” Rangers defenseman Marc Staal said from behind a table in Denver on Wednesday night after a 3-2 overtime loss to the Avalanche. “We’ll play it by ear and react to whatever the league does and go from there.” Rangers head coach David Quinn opened his postgame press conference with a short statement, explaining that the team was staying in Denver rather than immediately traveling to Arizona, where they were set to play the Coyotes on Saturday night. The Rangers were still awaiting word from the league on Thursday morning. Now, word of a suspended season is coming down. And who knows when the NHL will resume business.

https://nypost.com/2020/03/12/nhl-set-to-suspend-season-amid-coronavirus-outbreak/

Fed to pump in more than $1 trillion in dramatic ramping up of market intervention amid coronavirus meltdown

The Fed announced a bold new initiative in an effort to calm market tumult amid the coronavirus meltdown.

In all, the new moves pump in up to $1.5 trillion into the financial system in an effort to combat potential freezes brought on by the coronavirus.

This was the second day in a row and the third time this week the Fed has stepped in.

Stocks staged a sharp turnaround from earlier losses, though some of those gains were pared.

The Federal Reserve stepped into financial markets Thursday for the second day in a row and the third time this week, this time dramatically ramping up asset purchases amid the turmoil created by the coronavirus. “These changes are being made to address highly unusual disruptions in Treasury financing markets associated with the coronavirus outbreak,” the New York Fed said in an early afternoon announcement amid a washout on Wall Street that was heading toward the worst day since 1987.

Stocks were off their lows following the announcement though some of the gains were pared as the market digested the moves. Some in the market were skeptical that the move was enough, and even whether the the Fed itself had the proper tools to reverse the current market downtrend. “We continue to emphasize that this Fed will act aggressively and in particular that central banks are focused on safeguarding market functioning at this point, and will continue to provide liquidity in scale,” Ebrahim Rahbari, director of global economics at Citi Research. “However, despite the sharp initial risk rally, we think these measures will still not be sufficiently to durably stabilize market sentiment yet in light of credit concerns and escalating health concerns.”

One part of the announcement saw the Fed widen the scale for its $60 billion worth of money the Treasury purchases, which to now had been confined to short-term T-bills. Under the new regime, the Fed will extend its purchases “across a range of maturities” to include bills, notes, Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities and other instruments. The central bank will begin purchasing coupon-bearing securities, something market participants have been clamoring for since late 2019. The purchases start Thursday and will continue through April 13.

The second part of the new operations will see the New York Fed desk offer $500 billion in a three-month repo operation and a one-month operation. The offerings will happen on a weekly basis through the remainder of the program. In addition, the Fed will continue to offer at least $175 billion in overnight repos and $45 billion in two-week operations. Repos are short-term operations in which financial institutions provide high-quality collateral in exchange for cash reserves they use to operate. The extraordinary moves came amid extreme market turmoil created by uncertainty over the coronavirus pandemic. Government bond yields earlier this week cascaded to record lows amid reports of liquidity issues in the market and fears of a global recession.

However, questions remain whether the Fed can arrest the market’s issues on its own. Wall Street has been looking for an aggressive fiscal response and has yet to get it from Washington lawmakers. “The virus was the catalyst but it’s not the cause,” said Christopher Whalen, founder of Whalen Global Advisors. “Both bonds and equities were inflated rather dramatically by our friends at the Fed. You’re seeing the end game for monetary policy here, which is at a certain point you have to stop. Otherwise you get grotesque asset bubbles like we saw, and the engine just runs out of fuel.”

Markets have been looking for action by the Fed, which instituted an inter-meeting interest rate cut last week that did nothing to quell concerns. The Fed on Monday increased the limits for its ongoing repo operations, then Wednesday expanded the limits an announced a $50 billion term offering that attracted heavy interest earlier in the day Thursday. Along with the announcement, the Fed pledged that “the terms of operations will be adjusted as needed to foster smooth Treasury market functioning and efficient and effective policy implementation.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/12/fed-to-pump-more-than-500-billion-into-short-term-bank-funding-expand-types-of-security-purchases.html

>>8391645

In Vegas anything is possible, the bigger question in my mind is if they do have an insurance policy, what company would underwrite such a thing, this just might be the bigger fish to fry

Market expects Fed to cut U.S. interest rates to 0% this month

Expected Fed funds rate after March 2020 meeting

Following President Trump's address Wednesday night, the market only moved further in its expectations that the Fed would dramatically cut rates, pricing in as much as a 95% likelihood that the central bank would move toward a reduction of 100 basis points to 0%-0.25% at its next meeting.

The big picture: It would be the Fed's largest rate cut since December 2008 when it last cut rates to zero, warning that "labor market conditions have deteriorated, and the available data indicate that consumer spending, business investment, and industrial production have declined."

https://www.axios.com/federal-reserve-interest-rate-cut-coronavirus-451c0d3e-6e2c-40a4-babf-1d8f3563f9ce.html

>>8391790

Date is in the url..with that no need for redundancies.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/12/fed-to-pump-more-than-500-billion-into-short-term-bank-funding-expand-types-of-security-purchases.html

>>8391870

>This is what happens when I try to be helpfuls.

>I go KMS now :D

kek, no need for that, date in the url seems to be a new trend..as far as dates go..usually focus on that when the information is not current, but important.