Indians Announce Their Spring Complex in Goodyear Officially Closed

To the best of Chris Antonetti's knowledge, no one in the Indians organization has tested positive for COVID-19. In an effort to maintain that fact, the team has closed their offices in Cleveland and will suspend operations at their Goodyear facility on Friday.

Indians president Chris Antonetti estimated that, about a week ago, the organization had approximately 350 people at their complex in Goodyear, Arizona, around 100 at their Dominican Republic complex, and another 200 more people in Cleveland.

And thankfully, to the best of Antonetti's knowledge, no one in the organization has tested positive for COVID-19 at this time.

In an effort to maintain that, the team has closed their offices in Cleveland and will suspend operations at their Goodyear facility, as they closed their doors at noon Friday.

“We have tried to operate," Antonetti said on a conference call with reporters on Thursday, "with the guiding principle that we will continue to prioritize the health, safety and well-being of our players, our staff and the rest of our employees. And every decision we’ve made in that time has been with that as our guiding principle. 

"Our biggest priority was trying to ensure we were getting people back to their families, connecting with the people they wanted to be with for an extended period of time, and then maintaining the best hygiene practices as we could at our facilities as well employing the social distancing guidelines that were continuing to evolve."

Antonetti noted that the majority of their players have returned to their homes or wherever they prefer to be over the next few weeks or months. The only remaining players in Goodyear were finishing their rehab assignments.

The team is still working through how employees in the baseball operations department can remain productive through this pandemic shutdown period.

As for what that means for the players and their ability to stay prepared for a season, whenever that might arrive, Antonetti acknowledged that the on-field product isn't at the front of their minds at the moment.

“We are strongly recommending that all of our staff members, all of our players to adhere to the social distancing guidelines and best practices that help organizations," Antonetti said.

"If at this point that means baseball workouts are secondary, then they’re secondary at this point. We’ve encouraged our guys to do as much as they can while adhering to those guidelines. That’s a lot of individual workouts at their homes, going for runs outside, taking advantage of the space that they have to stay in the best shape possible.”

As for the players living in Arizona, some will remain housed at the complex near the team facility in Goodyear. However, players will no longer share rooms with each other, and meals are being delivered to reduce the time needed to be spent outside the building.

The team's Dominican complex remains open, though Antonetti indicated they have ramped up their hygiene efforts and reduced the "foot print" of the number of people at the facility. Anyone that chooses to stay at the complex I permitted to do so, but they are not allowed to leave and come back.

With so much uncertainty everywhere -- Antonetti, as was expected, couldn't provide much clarity on the amount of time they would need to ramp up when the 2020 campaign is deemed safe to begin -- the team has attempted to keep the lines of communication open with their players in recent days.

“We’ve been doing that over the course of the last week," Antonetti said, "through a variety of mediums, phone calls, text messaging, e-mail and some other platforms we have available to us to stay in contact with our group.”

Additionally, it was also recently reported that the Indians planned to pay their minor leaguers a $400 per week stipend over the next two weeks while baseball assessed how compensation for the 2020 season would be handled.

On Thursday, Major League Baseball announced a league-wide initiative for minor leaguers to receive compensation between now and the start of the minors season. MLB said they "will continue to work with all teams on the development of an industry-wide plan for compensation beyond April 8."

“One of the things we want to continue to do as an organization is support our players and staff as best as we possibly could," Antonetti said prior to the announcement by MLB. "We recognize the hardship that this could impose upon them, so we wanted to make sure we did our part to try to help them as best as we possibly could, especially in the transition back home.”