Yankees GM Brian Cashman 'optimistic' there will be a baseball season of some kind, but financial obstacles remain

Count Yankees general manager Brian Cashman among those who believe there will be a 2020 Major League Baseball season of some kind.

“I’m optimistic that where there’s a will, there’s a way,” he said Thursday on a charity video call to benefit Family Centers, a nonprofit that is providing financial relief for Fairfield County residents hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic. “We are all in this country trying to find a way to get up and running. We all have found ways to make adjustments. It is incumbent on all of us to find a way. I trust all leadership involved will find a way within our industry, just like everybody is trying to do in their respective industries as well. It doesn’t promise anything, but am I optimistic? I am optimistic.”

Regardless, the obstacles to that happening are many, not the least of which is MLB reaching an agreement with the Players Association on the structure of a shortened season. That includes what is likely to be the biggest obstacle of all — finances.

Those talks, which started Tuesday and, at the moment, have focused primarily on issues of health and safety, are not expected to conclude in short order.

“I don’t represent the players or the Players Association,” Cashman said. “There are a lot of hurdles everyone is trying to navigate, and certainly, finding common ground appropriately with the Players Association is one of them. The commissioner of baseball and his team are having honest, frank negotiations with that.”

Cashman said it is appropriate that health and safety matters are at center stage.

“I know Major League Baseball has been working extremely hard to come up with the best practices,” he said. “From my understanding, the very first conversation didn’t involve economics; it involved, how are we going to keep employees, from players to coaches to support staff and travel parties, etc., safe? How can we as an industry create a safe environment, because that is the only way it is going to work.”

And coming up with a workable plan just in terms of safety will take time.

“As we enter this new world we are dealing with, [what] you are seeing every day, people wearing masks,” Cashman said. “Each industry is trying to find a way to adjust in this COVID environment so we can move forward. We have to give everybody involved in that process the time to discuss it and work through it. Try to find comfort levels if they exist.

“If they aren’t able to, obviously they won’t be able to, but I do think the first steps are trying to educate each other with what is the ability to keep our employees safe, all parties that are involved. The big focus of the initial conversations right now is that information share, which is vitally important.”

Still, the obstacles aren’t just between players and owners. Within the Players Association, opinions vary, and one of the game’s top pitchers emphatically stated his thoughts Wednesday night regarding player pay in a season truncated because of a deadly virus.

“If I’m going to play, I should be getting the money I signed to be getting paid, not half because [the] season [was] cut in half,” Rays lefthander Blake Snell, the 2018 AL Cy Young Award winner, said on Twitch. “Y’all are like, ‘Bro, Blake, play for the love of the game, man. What’s wrong with you? Money should not be a thing.’ Bro, I’m risking my life. What do you mean it should not be a thing? It 100% should be a thing.”

Snell, 27, is in the midst of the five-year, $50 million deal he signed before the 2019 season.

MLB officially shut down operations March 13 and reached an agreement with the MLBPA on March 26 that, among other things, gave players a full year of service time, even in the event of a canceled season.

Additionally, the sides agreed that players would be paid on a prorated basis depending on games played. For union leader Tony Clark, the issue of pay at that point was closed.

But among the details that have leaked out regarding the owners’ most recent proposal — yet to be officially made to the MLBPA — is for a 50-50 split of revenue because games, at least at the start, would be played in front of no fans.

“This doesn’t make sense for me to lose all of that money and then go play and then be on lockdown, not around my family, not around the people I love, and get paid way the hell less,” Snell said. “Then the risk of injury every time I step on the field. It’s just not worth it. It’s not. I love baseball to death. It’s just not worth it.”

With Tim Healey

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.