Major League Soccer Can Avoid Baseball’s Covid-19 Outbreaks In Return To Local Markets. Here’s Why

On Saturday, Major League Soccer made official what had been widely reported, that it would continue the season following the MLS is Back Tournament in local markets. The action will begin with FC Dallas and Nashville SC — two teams forced out of the tournament because of clusters of Covid-19 cases — on Aug. 12 and 16, followed by the rest of the league resuming play the following weekend.

With Dallas and Nashville’s coronavirus struggles a recent memory, and with the early stages of Major League Baseball’s return in local markets disrupted by similar clusters within the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals, the announcement could prompt skepticism. If baseball — a very socially distant sport between the lines — can’t avoid team-wide breakouts while also living in their own communities, then how should we expect soccer — a less socially distant sport — to do the same?

That’s flawed thinking, however. If anything, the business of being a professional baseball player may be far riskier in terms of transmitting the virus between teammates and staff than the business of being a pro soccer player. Additionally, the risks that exist within structure of playing pro soccer may be more easily mitigated.

It’s very unlikely MLS will avoid additional confirmed positive cases. But careful planning could help them avoid the kind of cluster that would result in massive schedule disruption and take a team out of commission for weeks at a time.

Here are a few factors that work in MLS’ favor:

Time Together Indoors

Evidence has shown the significant majority of Covid-19 transmission occurs indoors in confined spaces. And baseball players spend significantly more time together indoors over the course of their work lives, literally hours together inside the same confined space of a clubhouse during normal times.

It’s unavoidable. There is batting practice and bullpen sessions long before the game begins. Once you’re at the park, you’re there, and if you’re not on the field, you’re in the clubhouse, training room or weight room. On road trips, there are buses to and from the ballpark nearly every day, another confined shared space.

In MLS, the gameday is considerably shorter. Home players can show up less than two hours before kickoff, and on the road arrival to the stadium is usually in the neighborhood of 90 prior. As for practice, the MLS already has protocols in place to limit virus transmission opportunities even during full team training. While individuals were confirmed with positive COVID-19 cases under these protocols, the only cases of apparent within-team transmission occurred once those teams were spending extended time together traveling to the MLS bubble.

Less Travel and Lodging

As previously mentioned, the case count within FC Dallas and Nashville SC grew once the teams traveled together to Central Florida in preparation for the MLS is Back Tournament, and it’s likely much of the team-wide spread occurred during that time. Similarly, the Cardinals and Marlins were both traveling when their coronavirus spread began to show up in test results.

Over their recently revised season, MLS teams can’t entirely avoid travel, but can minimize its risks much more than baseball clubs can, and much more than would be possible to a central tournament location. A regionalized schedule will allow teams to avoid hotel stays by taking buses or charter flights to and from closer away destinations on matchday. There will be no need for extended trips in which teams visit multiple cities — with multiple team flights, multiple nights in hotel rooms and multiple bus trips to practices and games — before returning home. It’s impossible to avoid some of those risks in baseball, when teams might play as many as 10 games in three different cities on one trip.

None of these factors prevent a player from contracting the virus directly from the outside world. But they all give an infected player fewer opportunities to pass it on to a teammate before he is found to be carrying the virus via recurring testing.

Schedule Flexibility

The nature of the baseball schedule — in which team play 6-7 games a week, and wrap the postseason by the end of October — leaves little room for the kind of interruption the Marlins and Cardinals have experienced. That lack of flexibility could also convince teams to make a decision like the Marlins reportedly did a couple weeks ago, playing a series finale in Philadelphia amid the apparent beginning of the team’s outbreak.

Even a condensed MLS schedule provides considerably more leeway to postpone and reschedule games should positive cases be confirmed prior to a match. Several matches in the second-tier USL have already been postponed because of positive tests, with the league building some flexibility into the schedule for exactly that purpose. MLS is currently planning to conclude its regular season in early November, but there’s no reason rescheduled games can’t be pushed until after the FIFA November international window if required.

Since fans are unlikely to be in attendance in most markets anyway, late-fall or winter playoffs could be relocated to warm-weather markets, or perhaps the same ESPN Wide World of Sports resort where the MLS is Back Tournament was staged.