MLB will also develop face shields for the home plate umpire who works in proximity to catchers and batters. According to The Athletic, MLB is testing the shields to make sure they are shatterproof.
MLB's masks optional policy splits the difference between South Korea's KBO and Taiwan's CPBL, the former which requires umpires to wear masks and gloves while the latter carries no such mandate.
A majority of umpires in Spring Training 2.0 have worn various measures of protective equipment.





In New York (Mets), HP Umpire Ryan Additon and base umpire CB Bucknor carried small bottles of hand sanitizer attached to their belts.

In all, most umpires throughout the league have worn some degree of protection during MLB's preseason restart.
Related Post: 2020 MLB Summer Camp (Spring) Roster (7/15/20).
Having questioned COVID case calculations while later clarifying his belief that the virus itself is very real even if case or death statistics may suffer from inflation, Joe West, along with fellow crew chief Mark Wegner in Tampa Bay, recently adopted the plastic face shield prototype MLB hopes to use throughout the 2020 season; West initially wore blue medical gloves and, like Wegner, wore a surgical-style mask underneath his facemask, but switched to the face shield Thursday after it arrived mid-game to Tropicana Field.
In Kansas City, Todd Tichenor, who wore a white face covering behind a catcher who also wore a mask, told Yahoo! Sports, "I want to make it work," explaining he'd do his best to mask up while admitting there might be times, perhaps out of habit, when he might inadvertently remove it: "Sometimes I let it slip from my nose. That was the tough part, was keeping the full mask on. I kinda just told myself, if I can do that 80 percent of the time, maybe I'm saving somebody 80 percent of the time."


The extent to which baseball will go to arm its umpires with protective equipment should indicate, with all of baseball's chatter relative to robot umpires, the value of keeping human umpires involved and on the field.
Sidebar: Speaking of arming umpires, Rob Drake, in Oakland, was pictured Thursday not wearing a face covering on the bases while plate umpire Gabe Morales wore both a covering and blue gloves (as did Brian Knight the day before). MLB's face covering policy seems very much to rely on personal preference.
Video as follows:
Alternate Link: MLB Protective Gear, Masks for Umpires Stirs Debate (CCS)
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