My thoughts below, not reporting.

The Cardinals have not played in August so far because of a COVID outbreak. The first and more important issue is health. I am not a doctor and will leave that to experts.

But it seems to me baseball wise, the current system has issues.

MLB and MLBPA agreed to 60-man rosters (between MLB and alt site) because of the fear/expectation there would be outbreaks. When/if outbreaks happened, the 60-man rosters were to ensure that there were representative players stretched out and ready to go.

But there was one other important element that wasn't adapted to the reality of 2020: the 40-man MLB roster. It was left unchanged.

In hindsight, in my opinion, that has proven to be a mistake.

Let's assume that the Cardinals are able to resume playing this weekend. The only stretched out pitchers they have are the players who are pitching at their alt site. Jack Flaherty, for instance, will have not pitched in three weeks.

Logically, the answer (even if less than ideal on competitive grounds) is to bring up numerous alt site pitchers to the MLB roster, let them help. But to do so means massively unending your 40-man in many cases.

Adding them is easy (if players are placed on IL for COVID). But any pitcher added will have to either remain on the 40-man when other players return from COVID IL stints or be dropped from the 40 (which means any other team can claim).

There are players who pass through the DFA process over and over without being claimed but it is a legitimate hindrance to adding non-40 man players to the roster.

My proposed solution: for this season only, tweak the 40 man in these cases. Multiple ways to do it, but simplest may be: if a team has X players test positive (8? 10?) that team will be allowed to add half as many players as positive tests to the 40 man temporarily.

Those added players would not go through the DFA/waivers process when the COVID positive players return from the IL. Would have to be signed off on by MLB and MLBPA but both sides get something here.

For MLB, it provides a better way to stock rosters and keep games. For players, it would give players service time and MLB salaries that they may otherwise not receive this year.

There absolutely may be better solutions than the one I just proposed, but the issue (40 man spots) is one that seems to need some fixes to adapt for our 2020 reality.