Tim Benz: Play MLB games. Or don't. But spare us the social distancing optics.

Try to keep up, baseball fans. Because you are reading a column that’s being written while stuck in “fast forward.”

In an effort to avoid a covid-19-induced shutdown, Major League Baseball is considering playing the 2020 season exclusively in a league-wide, semi-quarantined state of existence throughout the Phoenix, Az., area.

Via ESPN.com’s Jeff Passan:

“All 30 teams (would) play games at stadiums with no fans in the Phoenix area, including the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Chase Field, 10 spring training facilities and perhaps other nearby fields. Players, coaching staffs and other essential personnel would be sequestered at local hotels, where they would live in relative isolation and travel only to and from the stadium, sources said. Federal officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as the National Institutes of Health have been supportive of a plan that would adhere to strict isolation, promote social distancing and allow MLB to become the first professional sport to return.”

Now let’s fast forward beyond all the logistical hurdles, such as effectively and repeatedly testing players to make sure they are all clean from the virus and remain that way for an extended period of time.

We’ll blow by the ability to steward, cloister, and insulate all players, staffs, and broadcast personnel from exposure.

Forget the difficulty of trying to find a way to avoid playing games exclusively in Arizona heat in the middle of the day, maintaining the facilities and the fields, or the economics of pulling this off.

We’ll ignore the concerns of so many games likely being staged for East Coast audiences with Pacific start times, or the alarms that would go off if one person got a positive test one time and how things may have to be shut down again as a result.

At some other time we can circle back to the small matter of the macroeconomics of how this would (or wouldn’t) work for the players and the owners, roster sizes, or family concerns.

Yes. Those are the items we are going to fast forward beyond. Let’s play along and assume — ASSUME — all those monstrous questions can be answered.

Let’s play some Major League Baseball under those circumstances.

But first, here are a few of the other things that, according to Passan, MLB wants to have as part of this experiment.

• Implementing an electronic strike zone to allow the plate umpire to maintain sufficient distance from the catcher and batter

• No mound visits from the catcher or pitching coach

• Players sitting in the empty stands six feet apart — the recommended social-distancing space — instead of in a dugout

What?! Wait. Are you kidding me?

Well, except for the mound visits. I hate mound visits. Ditch them anyway. But not for this reason.

Seriously. Let me get this straight. The catchers can be next to a batter. But an umpire can’t be next to a catcher?

No mound visits. Got it. So does that also mean a first base coach can’t talk to the base runner either? Are tag plays disallowed? How long does covid-19 live on a base? Does pine tar from batting gloves kill it?

There should probably be a new ball for every pitch, right? If an unknowingly covid-positive pitcher holds a ball and throws it and a batter hits it, is it still infected? The outfielders should probably drop every fly ball on purpose, “out of an abundance of caution.”

You might think I’m being anal. Or sarcastic. I’m not.

Ok. I am. But this is stupid. Either the plan allows players to be safe enough to play, or it isn’t safe to play. One or the other. Make up your minds, MLB.

Everything else is for show. Superficial attempts to make it look like MLB isn’t pushing the envelope, being too risky, or perhaps coming back too fast. Which, obviously, would be the exact opposite of reality and what people would interpret by viewing these restrictions anyway.

This is insanity!

Especially the umpire thing. The league has been trying to get the umps out, and the mechanical strike zones in, for years now. Stop trying to hide that with painfully transparent window dressing about coronavirus safety. That’s farcical.

I’ve got a great idea. Let’s allow spit balls. But only if you doctor the ball with hand sanitizer.

Hmm. I bet the aloe would soften the cover of the ball too much. That’ll lower homers. Scrap that idea. I retract it.

Let’s be honest. Commissioner Rob Manfred would be weaving in these measures for the sake of “optics.” God, I hate “optics.” Coronavirus may not kill America. But decisions based on “optics” might.

And this is an example. There is no practicality to any of these ancillary measures, aside from patting yourself on the back for portraying an image of embracing #socialdistancing.

Like! Retweet!

If Major League Baseball is going to proceed as if its players are safe from infection, it shouldn’t simultaneously act like it is deathly afraid of exposure.

Here’s an image I have in my head. After nine innings of sweaty, person-to-person competition in close proximity, Josh Bell hits a walk-off homer. No celebration at home plate. He’s just going to wave to his teammates in the stands, I guess.

If we are naive enough to think that this “league in a bubble” idea can work, fine. Try it. We’ll bring fans back into the stadium eventually, I suppose.

But these other measures are flat out absurd. Play the games. Or don’t. The players are safe. Or they aren’t.

Save the “optics” for Twitter trends.