Cubs: What is the point of the 60 man player pool if it’s not being used?

Chicago Cubs: What is the point of the pool?

All that being said, let’s try and look at the facts of the matter and gain some insight into what MLB thought when they created this 60 man player pool for the 2020 season. The player pool was created for a couple of reasons, most importantly to provide help and fresh (and healthy) bodies for the big league clubs. In a shortened schedule with a restart, it was inevitable that there would be injuries, namely to pitchers. This has happened, so the foresight was prescient and appropriate here.

It was also inevitable that players would test positive with Covid-19 and be quarantined or kept out of games, thus necessitating a trip to the IL and a replacement. This one hasn’t quite materialized in the way most fans thought it would. Instead, we’ve had postponements. And then more postponements, when a new set of teams fly in. More on that later.

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The third reason behind these player pools sequestered in alternate locations is to give some of the best prospects for each team in baseball, some much-needed baseball time. You don’t want your best prospects losing an entire year of development. So the idea was that some of them could be kept at this other location to have them workout, play, see live pitching, and be around top organizational scouts/coaches in the hopes a whole year of progress wasn’t lost.

If you’ve been reading about the Cubs workouts in South Bend, you may have found it interesting that the “taxi” squad there doesn’t even have enough players to play a simulated game because of the large number of pitchers and not as large group of position players. While they’ve been busy doing other things and working out, it’s not quite the same as a minor league schedule full of games. But hey, at least it’s something and fulfilling one of the three reasons behind the player pool.

Chicago Cubs: Big Jon wants to know what is going on

Back to the use of the player pool for positive-testing players, though. I fully understand the issues and limitations of testing in MLB and America right now as it pertains to COVID-19. What I don’t understand is why this pool was even created if the goal was to replace positive-testing players with minor league replacements from an alternate site.

While on the surface, it may have sounded like an acceptable idea, this plan hasn’t come to fruition at all with the Marlins or Cardinals and seems more of pretense or smoke and mirrors. Wasn’t the player pool supposed to be in existence for just this reason?

Granted, for the integrity (whatever’s left after the Astros, Joe Kelly, and a 60 game schedule) of the sport, you don’t want Jack Flaherty or Carlos Martinez to be replaced by an A-ball pitcher- but then why do we even have a 60 man player pool?

If this pool doesn’t exist to fill gaps caused by positive-testing players, call each team’s pool a Minor League Camp and end the farce of it being akin to some taxi squad. It hasn’t been deployed in such a way, games are being postponed, and schedules for multiple teams are absolutely incinerated. Why? Is this really what MLB intended? I sure hope not, because it isn’t working- but maybe MLB has an ace in the hole and knows how to remedy this going forward.

If the 60 man player pool was never meant to replace portions of teams because of the coronavirus, then just make teams use the already-in-place 40 man roster with the included undisclosed three-man taxi complement.