The 2020 Major League Baseball season is hanging in the balance due to the coronavirus global pandemic, but Mike Rizzo remains optimistic.

"I'm optimistic, as is the commissioner, that we'll have baseball in 2020," the Washington Nationals general manager said. "I'm upbeat about that. The most important thing is to do it in the right way and the safest manner we can. But I believe that we will have baseball."

MLB has discussed an Arizona plan, as well as a three-state plan spread across Arizona, Texas and Florida.

Major League Baseball players and employees are participating in a major study that will test up to 10,000 people for COVID-19 antibodies.

The study, which is being run by Stanford University, USC and the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory (SMRTL), will use test kits that draw blood via pinprick and offer results within 10 minutes. The test will detect the prevalence of IgM, an antibody produced relatively early in those who have been infected with COVID-19, and IgG, a second form that doctors said lasts long after the infection happens. A positive test would confirm a person did in fact contract coronavirus, even if he or she was asymptomatic.

"This is the first study of national scope where we're going to get a read on a large number of communities throughout the United States to understand how extensive the spread of the virus has been," said Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University who will assess the data gathered this week and write a peer-reviewed paper he hopes to publish as early as next week. "This will be the very first of those. Why MLB versus other employers? I've reached out to others, but MLB moved by far the fastest. They've been enormously cooperative and flexible. We're trying to set up a scientific study that would normally take years to set up, and it's going to be a matter of weeks."

Because the data in the MLB study will be de-identified and not all players are expected to participate, Eichner said, it would not serve as a proxy for baseball's ability to return to play.

"MLB did not partner with us for any selfish reason to get their sport back sooner," Dr. Daniel Eichner, the president of SMRTL said. "They jumped in for public health policy. That was their intention and their only intention."

Josh Hamilton has been indicted on a felony charge of injury to a child after his teenage daughter accused him of being physical with her.

A Tarrant County (TX) grand jury indicted Hamilton on Monday. The 38-year-old remains free on $30,000 bond after he turned himself in to authorities on Oct. 30. If convicted, he faces a prison sentence of two to 10 years.

Hamilton's attorneys say the former Texas Rangers star is innocent of the charge.

His 14-year-old daughter told her mother, Hamilton's ex-wife, that her father struck her after he became enraged by a comment from her.

Major League Baseball is considering starting their season in Florida or more likely Arizona, sources tell The Athletic. Arizona has more stadiums in a concentrated area than Florida. 

The logistics of quarantine 30 teams in one area would be complex and potentially controversial. 

The possibility of the sport returning this summer in stadiums open to fans appears increasingly remote.

To play under quarantine, MLB would need to protect the health of players, other club personnel, umpires and those producing television broadcasts, plus hotel workers, bus drivers and anyone else involved with the players and games.

“Your margin of error is so small,” one baseball official said.