Rangers prepare to enter a spring training full of uncertainty over timing, rules and health protocols - The Dallas Morning News

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MLB spring training is a couple weeks away, probably, and the start of the new season is going to look a lot like the end of last season, at least in terms of the health and safety protocols players must adhere. If it were up to Rangers shortstop Isiah Kiner-Falefa, players should have the option of mitigating the risk.

“It’d be nice to get the vaccine,” said Kiner-Falefa, noting those decisions are more likely left up to the players union and the team owners. “For me personally, I’d like to get the vaccine before spring. But that’s out of our control.”

The vaccine is an important notch on a longer list of uncertainties that baseball players and teams face as they head into February. The date of spring training, the health protocols, even some of the rules of the game are still up in the air. Rangers coaches and players accepted virtual team awards this week that normally would be done in-person.

“I don’t complain about nothing,” said relief pitcher Jonathan Hernandez, who just moved back to Texas from the Dominican Republic last week. “I don’t mind about the rules, because I always follow them. Whatever they ask us to do, I will do it. I’m just a humble guy.”

But, Hernandez said a few seconds later. If there were one change he’d like to see, it would be more family members allowed at the stadium and to travel with the team on the road. Last year, those things didn’t happen. And it’s unclear, with the league set to embark on a nine-month season, just what will and will not be allowed when it’s all scheduled to begin on Feb. 17 in Surprise, Arizona.

Even that mid-February date has been something of a confusing point. Throughout the offseason, there have been media reports of it possibly being pushed back, even as much as a month. While it seems like the players union would prefer an on-time start, just last week the Cactus League, where the Rangers play in spring training, publicly asked for a delayed spring training start.

“Since I’m in Hawaii right now and the weather’s nice and it’s just the travel it’s so tough, that if I travel there you know the the risk of of everything is just too much for me,” Kiner-Falefa said. In a normal year, Kiner-Falefa would have moved back to Texas starting in early January, then gone to Arizona in early February. But this is a unique year, and he’s going to ride it out in his home state until the start of spring.

The silver lining, he notes, is that even though all of this might be something of an inconvenience, it’s nothing compared to what everyone went through a year ago.

“No one should have an excuse for into the year,” Kiner-Falefa said. “If anyone says they didn’t have a chance to workout, we didn’t have a chance to workout for three months last year. That was probably the biggest blessing even having that opportunity, because now it makes it easy.”

The Rangers, like every team, are doing a mixture of waiting to be told what to do, as well as preparing for the start of as normal of a season as possible. With the vaccine still in the early stages of making their way into the American public’s arms, it’s possible that the look of the baseball season will transform throughout the year if the threat of the virus weakens.

For now, though, they’re just preparing and hoping for the best.

“We’re preparing as if we’re starting February 17,” said manager Chris Woodward. “That’s probably the biggest thing for me. Just making sure that everybody’s ready, mentally. There’s a lot of hearsay and people are hearing different things in the media about. ... We have to be ready on February 17.”

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