The St. Louis Cardinals will be huge losers if coronavirus cancels the baseball season

According to a report by Ticket IQ, the St. Louis Cardinals stand to lose more than $152 million if Major League Baseball is out of action until the All-Star Game thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.

If that happens, I think it’s going to be years before the Cardinals recover from the loss of income they suffer from games not being played. St. Louis relies on ticket sales, unlike the teams ahead of them in the lost revenue list — the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox. Those other clubs pay the majority of their bills with massive television rights incomes that the smaller St. Louis market can’t match.

Instead of the Cardinals trading for Nolan Arenado, I’m concerned the Cardinals might be forced to cut the budget drastically to make up for the financial losses.

Don’t get me wrong. I think St. Louis could increase its payroll by $20-$25 million a year and still make a healthy profit. But if the Cardinals lose $150-$300 million in revenue and have to pay the players they have not to play, that’s going to be devastating.

It’s also going to be a big blow for the city of St. Louis. People love to complain about millionaire ballplayers and billionaire owners demanding taxpayers build them a stadium in which to play without much in return. But the loss of sales in restaurants, hotels, gas stations and shopping centers from fans who won’t be coming to town will be staggering — as will the lost sales tax receipts.

Could the 2020 baseball season be canceled?

I know it seems impossible that the 2020 baseball season could entirely be wiped out. But is it really?

I’m starting to believe being out until the All-Star Game is the best case scenario. It’s a bad sign that the International Olympic Committee postponed their games for at least a year. The Summer Olympics were set to begin in the middle of July. If they can’t play the Olympics, is Major League Baseball immune?

Am I the only person alarmed by the fact that Chris Sale and Noah Syndergaard are leading a charge of major league pitchers to the operating table for Tommy John surgery?

Why, when they haven’t thrown a pitch in a game in at least two weeks, would pitchers be so eager to go under the knife? Could it be that they believe the 2020 baseball season isn’t going to be played — so there is no time like the present to go under the knife? The only question I have at this point is can injured Cardinals starting pitcher Miles Mikolas, who was shut down in spring training before the games came to a halt with flexor tendon troubles, be far behind?

In James Earl Jones’ famous speech from the movie Field of Dreams he notes that America has changed dramatically over the years — but the one thing that has remained consistent through the decades has been baseball. We could always look to America’s pastime to get our minds off of war, the depression and disasters man made or natural. It’s truly going to be a forgettable year if 2020 became the first time that we couldn’t count on the grand old game.

The number of COVID-19 cases have done nothing but go up, up, up over the past two weeks. It doesn’t seem as if we’re anywhere near the end to this health crisis. And when the sickness goes away and people start to venture outside again, will people have the income to spend on going to ball games as they try to dig out from beneath layoffs, hospital bills and the depletion of their savings accounts?

I sure hope the St. Louis Cardinals — and the entirety of Major League Baseball — are set up to weather something like this. In the 2008 recession, we lost car companies with 100 years of history and banks that were “too big to fail” were swallowed up by even bigger ones. Is baseball too big to fail? We can only hope because it’s one of the things that makes life worthwhile to take my son to the ballpark or to come home from a long day of work and tune in the Cardinals game.

Now that we’ve reached the point where the regular season should be getting underway, missing baseball is really starting to hurt.

Scott Wuerz

Belleville News-Democrat

Scott Wuerz has written “Cheap Seats,” a St. Louis Cardinals fan blog for the Belleville News-Democrat, since 2007. He is a former BND reporter who covered breaking news and education.