For now, ‘play ball’ is on hold. So what would it take to resume playing MLB games?

On Monday I was supposed to fly to Phoenix to attend the last week of the Kansas City Royals’ spring training camp.

Like a lot of you, my plans have changed.

Spring training has been canceled and opening day pushed back. But rather than cry over spilled milk about how the COVID-19 coronavirus has wreaked havoc on America’s pastime, let’s take a look at what the spill looks like ... and what it’s going to take to clean it up.

Pitchers need time

Spring training normally lasts about six weeks, but a lot of big-league ballplayers will tell you they don’t really need that much time to get ready. In the old days, players had offseason jobs and needed to get back into playing shape; these days, staying in shape is a big-league player’s offseason job.

One of the reasons spring training still lasts six weeks is that gives teams time to sell tickets before they lose a game that matters.

Some position players have said they only actually need 30 to 40 at-bats to get ready for the real thing, so assuming all the starters stayed in the game for all nine innings, that would be approximately 10 spring training games. Assuming they don’t head home and decide to crush the McDonald’s drive-thru for lunch every day, you could get position players ready to go in a couple weeks.

Pitchers are a different deal.

Once starting pitchers get in shape most teams would like them to throw at least six or seven innings. That gets the team to the back end of its bullpen, where its best relievers — guys like the setup man and closer — become available.

If a starter can’t go deep in a game, that exposes the weakest part of any bullpen: the middle relievers. Lots of leads and games are lost in the sixth and seventh innings.

On March 11, the last full day of spring training, only a few starting pitchers threw as many as five innings and most threw considerably less. When they stopped spring training, most starting pitchers were nowhere near game-shape.

So whenever baseball resumes, the players will need time to get ready — and that will mean a second spring training. You can’t hold opening day without giving players time to prepare so you better know for sure what day you’re starting before you tell players to resume working out.

And right now, just about everything is uncertain.

Stay or go?

It seems that most teams are giving the players the option to stay in camp or go home, but what if home is Venezuela or Japan? If a player decides to go back to his home country, how hard will it be to get back in the United States once baseball resumes?

And if a player goes home, his team loses control over his workouts.

One of the phrases you hear around baseball is “stay in your lane.” Here’s what that means.

The clubs don’t want their pitching coach giving hitting advice or the hitting coach tinkering with the pitchers. They want the players to hear one voice, and when a player goes home, a team doesn’t know who might have his ear.

A player might decide to work out with his old high school coach and come back with his swing or pitching motion messed up. More than one player has used the offseason to work on the wrong stuff and that meant some coach had to fix the damage once the player returned to the team.

When players are in camp, teams controls them. When players, aren’t they don’t.

Minor-league predicament

When most fans think about big-league ballplayers they think about guys who are set financially, but those guys are the exception. The average big-league career is 5.6 years; it takes six year to become a free agent.

If a minor-leaguer was in camp and depended on the team for housing and food and then the team shuts down, where does that guy go and how does he pay for it?

Does he try to stay in shape by going to his local batting cage despite warnings about social distancing, or does he stay home, get out of shape and risk getting cut whenever baseball resumes?

Teams have to figure out how to take care of their minor-league players.

Retirees run the park

You see it during the regular season at a team’s home park, but it’s even more prevalent at spring training sites: retirees acting as ushers, ticket takers and concession stand workers.

These are not high-paying jobs, but a lot of people enjoy being around the game and can use the extra income such gigs provide. And these are some of the people most susceptible to the coronavirus.

When baseball resumes, they’re going to have to figure out how to protect the people they use to run their ballparks.

These aren’t the only problems baseball will face in the near future, but they’re on the list. And cleaning up this mess is going to take a pretty big mop.