Many Cubs will stay and train in Mesa after MLB lets players pick where to ride out crisis

MESA, Ariz. — While most Cubs players will hang tight in Arizona during a fragmented spring training, manager David Ross and much of the coaching staff will head home, followed by the front office in the coming days.

Major League Baseball announced Friday night that because of coronavirus precautions, players were free to remain in Arizona or return to their home cities or their team’s home city.

“We don’t have final word on all players, but it seems that, for now, a number of players in major-league camp are interested in sticking around and using the facility for weight-room activity and light baseball activity,” team president Theo Epstein said in a conference call. “We will keep the facility open and have any reduced amount of staff there to facilitate that.”

Epstein compared the upcoming days to a January schedule of players arriving to work out in advance of spring training. A skeleton crew of coaches will be on hand to assist while keeping attendance low at the facility at any one time.

“We will work to manage the numbers so there are not too many players assembling at the same time, trying to adhere to the directions of public health officials to not have too large of a group assembly,” Epstein said.

The number of players working out in Arizona is expected to dwindle as March ends and the leases on players’ temporary residences expire. Some are expected to use the facilities at Wrigley Field in the coming weeks, although the weight room is being remodeled and is not available for at least another week.

On Friday, the Cubs’ spring-training facility in Mesa received what was described as a “deep cleaning.” The same degree of cleaning might happen at Wrigley eventually.

“I haven’t heard yet,” Epstein said. “Right now at Wrigley, there are only a handful of people working there. I would imagine we would take appropriate steps to clean Wrigley before players start showing up there or we have more than a handful of players in the building.”

As for MLB delaying Opening Day by at least two weeks, the idea of the regular season starting in early April seems extremely optimistic at best.

“With the reality [that] teams will need three to four weeks of working out together to get ready for the season, you can draw your own reasonable conclusions on when Opening Day is, or how realistic an April Opening Day is,” Epstein said.

Asked to assess his emotions over the last several days, Epstein put the big picture over baseball.

“At the end of day, all of us have a moment before you put your head on the pillow where you realize what we’re all dealing with and the potential consequences for society as a whole,” he said. “We’ll pull together and handle this in the best possible way.

“So we’re all in this together, and it’s time to make collective sacrifices, have each other’s back and minimize the suffering, and hopefully return back to normal as soon as possible. But it probably won’t be until we are all back to normal to put it into proper perspective and process it.”