The Vermont Lake Monsters’ season has been delayed indefinitely due to the coronavirus, according to an announcement from the New York-Penn League.
The announcement, released Friday just days ahead of the team’s scheduled opening day, comes as Major League Baseball and its players are struggling to reach an agreement on a way to start the 2020 season.
Kyle Bostwick, the Lake Monsters’ vice president, said the team is not privy to conversations about this season’s future.
“We’re not part of the negotiations,” he said. “We certainly don’t know what the thought is with the Minor League players, nor do we have any idea what Major League Baseball’s thinking with regards to their season.”
Friday’s announcement did not come as a surprise. Minor League parks across the country remain empty while MLB has hit repeated snags in negotiations with its players’ union to start the 2020 season. George Commo, the Lake Monsters’ longtime broadcaster, said that even if the league is able to strike a deal, it’s unlikely baseball will be played at Centennial Field this summer.
“If there is a minor league season, it will be at the Triple-A type level,” he said. “I think it would be very unlikely they would get down as far as short-season A ball.”
The announcement casts further uncertainty over the Lake Monsters’ future. The club was one of 42 teams that MLB proposed be eliminated under a new Professional Baseball Agreement.
Bostwick said the club also has no knowledge of the PBA negotiations.
“There’s a negotiation that’s going on with regards to the PBA that expires at the end of this season,” he said. “We’re not privy to any of those details. As far as this season goes, we don’t know anything more than what’s been reported in the media.”
The plan to downsize MiLB was met with fervent opposition from state and city officials. The Burlington City Council passed a resolution in February discouraging MLB from going forward with the proposal. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., wrote a letter in November to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred calling the plan “an absolute disaster for baseball fans, workers and communities throughout the country.”
Commo, a Vermont Association of Broadcasters hall of famer, said the coronavirus could push conversations about the PBA to the back burner.
“The minors were fighting it, and I think they were going to have a lot of support to fight it before the virus came along,” Commo said. “But now with the virus, that kind of thing — baseball arguing about whether or not they’re going to keep franchises — drops way further down on the priority list than it probably would have been otherwise.”
Commo, though, said he is hopeful about baseball remaining in Burlington in some form, such as a team that’s a part of a new developmental league.
“I think Vermont fans, Burlington fans, who are used to watching the Lake Monsters would be just as happy with that kind of a team, as long as they still have Champ, and they still have the other things that have gone into making the program so much fun and so successful through the years,” he said.
