CLEVELAND -- In just a one-week span, the Indians went from worrying about keeping their pitchers on schedule after back-to-back rainouts, to temporarily forgetting about baseball to learn the best health and wellness practices. In those seven days, the club safely sent the majority of its players back to their hometowns, and now the Tribe will completely shut down the Spring Training complex. 

Indians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti said on a conference call on Thursday morning that the Tribe’s facility in Goodyear, Ariz., will officially close on Friday for the foreseeable future due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“I think, again, we wanted to make sure we were doing everything we could to maintain the health and wellness of our players and staff,” Antonetti said. “We chose to operate the Goodyear complex with a significantly reduced footprint and still followed those best practices. But at this point, the guidance we’re getting from health experts is that the best decision would be just to stop that activity all together, and that’s what we’ll do.”

Since Major League Baseball announced that the remainder of Spring Training games would be cancelled and the start of the 2020 season would be pushed back, the Tribe reduced the 350-plus staffers in Goodyear, 100 personnel at the club's Dominican Academy and 200 workers in Cleveland significantly. All in Cleveland have begun working from home and the Goodyear office will be closed indefinitely. But through this process, Antonetti said that none of his players or staff members, to his knowledge, has tested positive for the coronavirus (COVID-19).

“One of the big priorities for us has been to stay in continual contact with our players and our staff throughout the organization,” Antonetti said. “And we have been doing that over the course of the last week through a variety of mediums. Phone calls, text messaging, email, and some other platforms we have available to us to stay in regular contact with our group.”

Most players have gone back to their respective hometowns, including the Dominican Republic, while some chose to go to Cleveland or remain in Arizona.

“We are strongly recommending all of our players, all of our staff members to adhere to the social distancing guidelines and best practices that health organizations are providing,” Antonetti said. “If at this point that means baseball workouts are secondary, then they’re secondary at this point. We’ve encouraged our guys to do as much as they can while adhering to those guidelines. That’s a lot of individual workouts in their home, going for runs outside, taking advantage of the space they have to stay in the best shape possible. But most importantly adhering to the guidelines from the health experts.”

The Tribe's living complexes across the street from its training facility housed both Major and Minor League players during camp. Those who chose to stay in their apartments have been moved into their own rooms (rather than sharing) and now receive boxed meals to minimize the time they have to leave the area. On Wednesday, Cleveland also became one of the handful of organizations to say it will continue to pay its Minor League players during this temporary suspension.

“I think one of the things we want to make sure we continue to do as an organization is support our players and staff as best as we possibly could,” Antonetti said. “With respect to our Minor League guys, we recognize the hardship this could impose upon them and so we wanted to make sure we did our part to try to help them as best as we possibly could, especially in the transition back home.”

Now, the Indians are figuring out how to plan for a future that has so many uncertainties. The team knows that it will need another round -- even if it’s brief -- of Spring Training before a regular season could begin. How long would that be? Antonetti said he’s not exactly sure how the scheduling will play out.

“It’s a really hard question,” Antonetti said. “A lot of it would depend on how long we’re off. And what types of activities our players are able to do preceding the start of games. At minimum, we would hope that we could have at least a few weeks, 2-3 weeks. But again, there’s so much uncertainty it’s hard to assess with any accuracy.”