Guest: Chris Rongey, ESPN 101 St. Louis
- Recap Tigers series: Is Tim Anderson the most important offensive player? Are we expecting too much from Dylan Cease too soon?
- Preview the weekend series against the St. Louis Cardinals with Chris Rongey, former White Sox pre/postgame host who now works for 101 ESPN St. Louis.
Listen below:
I think St. Louis should have to forfeit the game today. It bugs me that we have to accommodate a team that has played five games to date and essentially is a complete mess.
Mathematically speaking we have roughly a 51 percent of sweeping a doubleheader and I would venture to guess our chances of winning the Friday and Saturday game as sperate entities would have been higher.
I guess the bright spot is Moncada gets an extra day of rest.
I think there are big-picture issues with forfeiting. In terms of competitive integrity, giving teams free wins just because they happened to catch a team during an outbreak seems like a bad precedent, especially if another outbreak swings the standings in the final two weeks. Also, the players wouldn’t be getting paid for those games, and players probably want to be paid for as many games as possible in a shortened season.
There probably needs to be a way to protect healthy/faultless teams from having an awful remaining schedule, and forfeiting might be more just if a team flouted the guidelines and invited an outbreak. But as long as nobody can confirm how the Cardinals’ outbreak happened, they probably can’t set a precedent on speculation.
I think you made a solid case for not forfeiting. I didn’t factor in altering the standings in the final week.