Stearns provides latest on Crew amid pandemic

MILWAUKEE -- Brewers president of baseball operations David Stearns answered questions from the media on Sunday as developments continued to move rapidly in Major League Baseball’s response to the national emergency created by the coronavirus pandemic.

Here are some of the key comments from the session:

Stearns: Before we get into the meat of what everyone is going to ask me, and I certainly appreciate that interest in what we’re doing, the interest in our game, the interest in the Brewers here, I do think it’s important for all of us to note as a community that this is a global health pandemic. We now have a public health emergency in our country. We’re likely to enter a very challenging economic time in our country. We’ve got communities all over our area and our country where kids can’t go to school right now, where kids aren’t getting hot meals at school right now, and a whole host of other consequences of this pandemic. I absolutely understand that there is an interest in the Brewers, there is an interest in baseball, and I will do my best to answer all of your questions. I also hope that as we go forward here, and some of the questions about baseball and sports in general, the entertainment industry in general, subside, that everyone can do their part to really aid what is going to be a very trying time in our community and likely throughout the country in the coming weeks.

What has it been like navigating day after day of change?

Stearns: Operationally, this is something we’ve never experienced before. There are a whole host of concerns that we are working through right now. First on that list of concerns is making sure that all of our employees are safe, and that includes our players, that includes our coaches, it includes our medical staff, our front office staff, our part-time workers and temporary workers. We have 300 employees, and we have to make sure we are providing all of them a safe environment in which to work. So that’s been the top-level concern.

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Beyond that, we obviously operationally have Major League Baseball players and Minor League baseball players that at some point are going to begin a season. So we have to work through how to make sure that whenever that occurs, they are appropriately prepared.

What are the logistics right now? Where are you, where is Craig Counsell and his coaches, and where are the players?

Stearns: I think as you guys know, players were given three choices: They could stay in Arizona with access to our complex, they could go to Milwaukee and have access to out facility in Milwaukee, or they could go home. Players are still going through the decision process. It looks like, based on the numbers that I have, that ultimately, we are going to have a third of our Major League players here in Arizona, probably about a third in Milwaukee and then a third going home.

I am in Arizona right now. I’ll get back to Milwaukee as soon as I can, but for now, we’ve got to make sure that the operation here is working. The Major League coaches are or will be going to their home cities. That’s true with all of our coaches -- Major League and Minor League. We have coaches who live here locally in Arizona, including [bullpen coach] Steve Karsay, [bench coach] Pat Murphy, [assistant hitting coach] Jacob Cruz and [first-base coach] Jason Lane, in addition to numerous Minor League coaches. So players here will have access to coaching if they so choose. As you guys know, Craig lives in Milwaukee and [third-base coach] Eddie Sedar is going to be in Milwaukee. [Bullpen catcher] Marcus Hanel lives in Milwaukee. So, for players who choose to work out at our facility in Milwaukee, we will have coaches there, as well. But as a best practice, coaches are going to be in their home cities. …

I think what [MLB] is trying to get away from is teams having organized, full workouts: Show up at your complex at 9 a.m. and go out for team stretch. Major League players still have access to our facility, but we don’t necessarily have the same organized workout. Players can come. We will be staffed to some extent in a skeleton nature, I think, here in Phoenix. To ensure players’ safety, we certainly will have some staff. So, players can come in and work out, but there will not be the full, formalized Spring Training workouts that everyone is used to.

What about Minor League players?

Stearns: All of our Minor League players have been sent home. I think the vast majority of them were ready to go home and wanted to go home. We do have a very small subset of Minor League players who are staying here. Those are players with some unique cases from countries where perhaps it’s not safe to go back to right now. Players in a few instances where this is really the safest place for them to be. So in those cases, players will remain here. We are working through what the next couple of weeks will look like for them.

After a Yankees Minor Leaguer became the first player in organized baseball known to test positive for COVID-19, did that change anything for clubs?

Stearns: I think if you were paying attention over the past couple of days to all of the warnings we were getting from public health officials, having someone associated with our game test positive was an inevitability. So I don’t think it surprises anyone that it happened.

Have any Brewers players or staff fallen ill?

Stearns: None of our players or staff have tested positive for COVID-19. … We are following all CDC protocols, and CDC protocols require certain symptoms, certain contacts, in order to get a test. We are following all CDC protocols, and at this point, we are very comfortable that no one in our camp has tested positive for COVID-19.

How has MLB been communicating with clubs?

Stearns: Obviously, things are moving really fast, and have been since the night the NBA postponed its season. That’s clearly the night everything picked up rapidly. The Commissioner’s Office holds calls with the principal owner of each club at least once a day, from what I can gather, and they’ll hold calls with the head of baseball operations for each club at least once a day, and that’s turned into multiple calls each of the past few days. They’re doing their best to keep us updated. But this is new for them as well. I think everyone is learning more each day, and everyone is doing their best to put in the best operational protocols possible.

What preventative protocols are in place at Miller Park and American Family Fields of Phoenix?

Stearns: This coming week, both here in our [Arizona] facility and at Miller Park, we are going through a rigorous deep clean for the entire facility. It will cause certain portions of our facilities in both places to be closed at times as we go through that process. Throughout the spring, we have been testing surfaces in our complex for various levels of bacteria. This is actually a process that we implemented a couple of years ago, but we’ve obviously ramped it up in recent weeks here. Our levels have actually gone down because of the precautions we have taken. We have done everything we can to keep our facility clean and operational. We also are very aware that epidemiologists and the best public health officials that we have right now are strongly advising against mass congregations of people, so I think the decision to have people have the option to go their own way was probably a wise one.

What is happening for employees beyond the Major League camp roster?

Stearns: We’re having a wide variety of conversations on those topics, on employees, including Minor League players, who traditionally have not been paid until games get going. That includes part-time employees, hourly employees, Minor League players. We’ve got a whole host of them. Those are conversations that are going to be ongoing. We understand that this is a crisis that is affecting large segments of our community, both inside and outside of our organization. And we’re going to do everything we can to be sensitive to that. …

I am very confident that our organization will do everything it can to support our community through this. I’m very confident that when we do get back to work, when we do get back to Miller Park, when we turn on the lights and begin playing games, that we will be a very welcome and needed diversion for the entire Wisconsin community.