PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - The Athletic's Zach Buchanan discusses MLB's media restrictions amid COVID-19 outbreak

Episode Date: March 11, 2020

In a special episode of The Rattle Podcast, Zach Buchanan, who covers the Diamondbacks at The Athletic, discusses Major League Baseball's recent announcement that members of the media will temporarily be denied access to clubhouses due to concerns over COVID-19. Buchanan proposes an alternate solution, and discusses what it would be like if games were played with the stands empty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ladies and gentlemen here in this special edition of the Rattle Podcast, we are honored to be joined by Zach Buchanan, who covers the Diamondbacks also writes some prospect feature stories as well, does very, very good work for the athletic. And we are honored to have Zach with us today. Zach, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. Yeah, sure.

Happy to be on. Zach, I know you've been very vocal over Twitter over these last few days, and you're certainly not alone in this. There's been a lot of members of the media saying very similar things. Obviously, news came down just a couple of days ago that Major League Baseball has decided to limit clubhouse access to the media by basically not even allowing media members in the clubhouse at all. All interviews with players for Major League Baseball will happen on some other site.

But presumably, you know, it's going to be harder for PR staffs of Major League Baseball teams to actually manage those interviews and give. media members the exact same level of access that they would have if they were allowed in the clubhouse. Your tweet the other day made me chuckle when you said, Dear MLB, I promise to stop looking players on the face before every clubhouse interview. Of course, that's certainly not necessary. It's not like there's a whole lot of physical contact happening in these interviews, and yet MLB has decided to take these precautions anyway. Zach, I would love to hear just your opinion on this and how it limits, you know, what people like you do every day.

Yeah, sure. So, I mean, there are two main ideas here. One is the importance of clubhouse access, what we get out of that. And the other is, you know, if this is supposed to be temporary and we all hope it is temporary, is it effective from a public health standpoint. And so I'm going to take those two in order. Clubouts access, especially in baseball, it's the best act as that any sport gives you. We're in there for an hour before every game, including in spring training in the mornings. And that's really a chance to, you're not in there most of the time. You're not conducting interviews. You're going up to a new player, getting to know him a little bit, chatting up guys. And it builds this relationship between the two of you. And that relationship is what turns into really good stories down the road. It's when I read a story last year about Blake's Whitehart and his adopted brother's suicide, that was a story that he really had to trust me to write.

And that trust was built over the course of several. interactions in the clubhouse where I was able to walk up to him and talk to him, get to know him, and he got to know me. Almost all of my ideas for stories have come out of clubhouse access or come from one-on-one interviews that I did not have to clear with PR to have. And right now the situation you're having where they're bringing players out and PR, I have to give them credit. We've only had one day of this so far, but they're doing their best to accommodate this.

This is more of a headache for team media relations staffs than it was otherwise because now if we didn't talk to anybody, they have to go fetch that guy out of the clubhouse. Right. But it creates this, it creates a bit of a rush feeling where you feel like you're keeping the player from something because you're both standing outside of the wait room and he's in his gear about to go on somewhere. And it creates this situation where you kind of have to clue PR in to what you're writing about, which is not to say that people. PR is kind of constantly lurking to skunk whatever story you might be working on. But there are times when if you want to ask a guy about something sensitive, whether it has to do with baseball or not, you kind of want to just ask it to him privately.

So if he turns you down, the issue is dead, you know, that suddenly the team isn't worrying about a story about this coming out. So it just provides, you've lost this ability to kind of really have a private conversation in relationship with someone. And, you know, I'm not so much worried about exclusivity and stuff. There are concerns that, you know, if you bring a player out, everybody's going to get him. Media relations departments across the league, it sounds like, are doing a really good job of making sure if you need someone for a one-on-one, you get that guy for a one-on-one. But we're just all just worried that this will be the new status quo because we're all worried about losing the ability to do our jobs well.

And access over the years has gotten a little bit worse, a little bit worse, a little bit worse, a little bit worse. something back in the day, you could be in the clubhouse until, I think, 30 minutes before first pitch or something like that. Wow. That hasn't been the case ever since I've been in the business. But you just really get to know people a lot better. I don't think you need that level of access where you're in there for three hours. I think it is healthy to keep a certain amount of remove between reporters and subjects because

otherwise you get a little too chummy. But right now, we've swung a little bit far in the other direction. but if this were truly going to help people stay healthy and avoid catching coronavirus, we'd be fine with it. And we're certainly fine with a temporary measure to do that. But I question whether this is going to make that much of a difference. The reasoning the league has given us is that locker rooms in particular because they're sweaty and it can be musty, and you guys coming out of the shower, that they are a greater risk for infection than any other place.

But they're still letting the clubhouse attendants in there. They're still letting the players in there. The only variable that has been removed is quote unquote non-essential personnel, which basically us, friends of these players, children of these players. And I don't see how we media members are that much more of a risk. But hey, let's consider for the sake of argument that it does protect the players. What about the thousands, tens of thousands of fans that pack these stadiums in spring training? Do we not have a duty to protect them as well? I mean, we've seen today that Governor Jay Inslee of Washington has limited public gatherings of more than 250 people through the rest of the month, and that's going to affect the Mariners' home openers.

And so they're looking at alternate places to play their games. I mean, everywhere around the world, public health experts are saying, do not get all these people together in one place. This is how the virus is going to just balloon. And that hasn't happened here yet. And I'd point out for people who can say that the mini is whining, if they cancel the games, you know, it's worse for us than it is now. We get no access. There's nothing to cover. We're sitting at home with nothing to do.

That would be worse for us. But I think a lot of us would prefer that because we'd feel like, okay, this is actually making a difference. Right now we feel like our jobs are being made harder and no one's actually being made safer from this virus. I'm curious from your standpoint, Zach, obviously there's, you know, there's an issue here. and I think I'm with you on, you know, as a member of the media myself, you know, I certainly see your concerns and where you're coming from. What would you propose, you know, if you're in the shoes of, you know, Rob Manfred, the MLB Commissioner right now, what are, you know, some alternative strategies that you would want to propose? I mean, right now, if you're, if you're looking at truly what will keep people healthy,

you at least have to be thinking about playing these games in front of empty crowds. or I think I've seen maybe heard of some programs limiting their crowds to like one third capacity and spacing people out. But in that situation, you still got vendors handing food to people and stuff like that. I mean, there's a lot of variables there to consider. So I think that's got to be the first step. I mean, the issue is not that it's less concerning that a player might get sick, although you certainly want to avoid that if you can. And what's concerning is that all you're bringing in all these fans. These and like major concerts and political rallies are the things that just pack people into very tight proximity to each other.

And that's how the, you know, the virus could go from being in one person to being in 100 people overnight. Yeah. Just because of that one contact. And so I think you want to avoid that. And so if they still need to play the games, which I get, they should be looking at playing in empty stadiums. That's what the MPB was doing in its preseason, although they have now postponed the start of their regular season. But at least until we have a really good idea of how many people have this, which we don't right now because there have not been enough tests available. I think the state of Arizona has only tested 100 people until a third of those tests have yet to be completed.

We really don't have a feel for how widespread this thing is. And so we need to be extra cautious until we do have that feel. And empty stadiums is the first step you can do to actually make a difference with that. Obviously, you have a lot of relationships with players around the game, just given the nature of your job. I'm curious. I'm sure you heard the interview with LeBron James that happened just about a week ago where he said that he would not be willing to play NBA games in front of empty crowds. I'm curious, just based on your experience and what you know about the guys in the Diamondbacks Clubhouse, how do you think they would feel about playing an opening day game in a game?

front of a completely empty crowd. I mean, it would be weird for them. But they're getting a lot of this atmosphere now, really, because they've been playing a lot of backfields games, and it is eerily quiet. I can't remember whose game it was. Maybe I think it was Luke Weaver's backfield game a couple days ago, where all you could hear, other than the sounds of baseball,

we're like these very loud, like seven and eight-year-olds playing like 20 feet away. And screaming at each other like seven- and eight-year-olds do. and, you know, arguing over the rules, whatever, you know, kid game they were playing. And, you know, if you're a soon-to-be parent like me, it was both, like, cute and also horrifying. But if you're on the field, like, it is all you could hear. Like, it's just so dead quiet. And it's hard for guys to kind of get the adrenaline going for those kind of things. So it's not uncommon to see big league pitchers especially struggle and really get beat up in the zone in those games against minor.

league hitters just because they're you know you can't really get all the fire stoke that much um but we asked a couple guys about this uh a few days ago our last day in the clubhouse when they announced this and and Andrew Jafin and David Bralta both said look look we're going to have to deal with it we all played in minor league games we've all played on backfield games like yeah it'll be something we have to do I don't think anybody's saying um oh we shouldn't play the games especially in baseball where so much of it is like kind of you spend a six weeks getting ready for the season, then if you suddenly put a two-week halt on it, especially pitchers, they're going to have to start all over. You know, it's hard to keep your arm going. Yeah.

So I think they would, they would prefer not to play in empty stadiums, but I think that, you know, if that's what's decided, it has to happen, they'd be like, okay, we're, we're just going to have to deal with it. Yeah. I think another interesting component of this is that, you know, it's obviously not just the players who would have to go out there and figure out how to play, you know, a game in front of, you know, a completely empty crowd, maybe a stadium that holds, you know, 40,000 people and there's just nobody there, just, you know, like you said, just this eerie, kind of dead silence at games. But I think, you know, an interesting flip side to this is that all of these major league franchises that have all these promotions planned and concerts and all

of these events planned to happen throughout the season, you know, presumably they're going to lose a heck of a lot of revenue from, you know, no ticket sales happening, just, you know, just all of the things, all of the money-making. taking things that come out of a baseball game day in and day out for these franchises. If those things suddenly are taken away, do you think MLB teams would have any issues managing with that? You know, I don't think that they're going to really be hurting on the bottom line that much. Of course they want to make money.

Yeah. But everybody's going to be losing money during this. I mean, you saw if South by Southwest was canceled in Austin. I mean, I think I saw maybe, I could be completely wrong on this, but that's going to cost the city of Austin. in like basically $3.5 billion in economic activity because it's such a huge event. Wow. And there's no mechanism to compensate everybody that's going to lose money because of the coronavirus.

You know, there's just too many people. There's going to be too much money. Yeah. We need that money to battle the coronavirus. If anything, that money needs to be spent on helping out families and workers who do not have like paid sick leave policies who really can't afford to miswork or can't afford to get child care for kids that are pulled out of school. And, I mean, I think that has to be priority number one. So I don't think that we need to really be crying about a sports league that made $11

billion in revenue last year. The games will resume at some point. I think we have to worry about the lives that are disrupted. But in the grander view, I mean, this is happening because the country has been unprepared for this, even though we've known of this virus for months now. And it's been unprepared for it to come over here. and it's running rampant now in the country because we really don't know the extent of it if we've been more prepared on the front end, we maybe could have contained it and all of this

could have been avoided. Zach, we really appreciate your perspective. Thank you so much for giving us a few minutes of your time today. Yeah, sure. Happy to have to be on.