Yankees: MLB Player ‘Opt-Outs’ for 2020 Season Explained

What does it mean when an MLB player opts out of the 2020 season?

We understand that the 2020 MLB season has been, and will be, confusing, for as long as it may last. Yankees fans are getting excited for intra-squad baseball under the lights in the Bronx on Monday night.

Meanwhile, teams like the Astros and Nationals cancelled Summer Camp on Monday because the league’s testers apparently traded their COVID-19 swabs for magic beans, and players like Kris Bryant have (rightfully) complained that they’re not being tested nearly enough.

Therefore, it was only natural to miss Braves outfielder Nick Markakis choosing not to play the 2020 season on Monday morning, and along with it a VERY helpful explainer about what we should be talking about when we discuss that decision.

What does it mean when a player has “elected not to play” the 2020 MLB season?

Well, for one thing, it means we ALL reported the David Price story wrong.

No, Price did not opt out of the 2020 season. That designation is reserved only for high-risk participants in the campaign, who will receive their full service time and salary for the games they’re missing. MLB deems those players incapable of playing due to physical limitations. No Yankees have opted out (and likely won’t), and no Yankees have elected not to play either…yet.

We learned from Sean Doolittle’s wife Eireann Dolan a few weeks ago, too, that this group doesn’t include players with high-risk spouses/family members, who are treated just like other MLB players who choose not to participate in the 2020 season of their own volition, and not because they’ve been deemed a medical risk by the league.

Therefore, Yankees ace Gerrit Cole wouldn’t have received any breaks to be with his wife, Amy, and their newborn.

So, to be clear: Players like Markakis and Price are weighing their personal beliefs/feelings of safety, and are electing not to play the 2020 MLB season. They will not be paid. They will not receive any service time. Price’s three remaining years on his Dodgers contract still exist — he will now be bound to LA through 2023, not 2022.

This situation remains a tangled knot, with a new layer of confusion emerging each morning, which must be worked out by 30 different governing bodies pulling in 100 directions. Quite frankly, it stinks, and writing about the machinations while MLB itself somehow forgets about shipping delays on a holiday weekend, is a hard row to hoe.

But now we know exactly one thing: only high-risk players can technically “opt out”; everyone else is electing to do so, and waiving the benefits that they argued for over the past several months. Those players should certainly be applauded for standing up for what they believe is safe.