Notes: Sedar on new signs, making masks

MILWAUKEE -- Every time you think you’ve considered every intricacy of playing baseball in the age of COVID-19, something new comes to mind.

Take third-base coaches. There’s one obvious no-no in 2020: players shaking hands or high-fiving the coach while rounding third base on home runs. But longtime Brewers coach Ed Sedar mentioned another possible change on Tuesday that you may not have considered.

“We haven’t started doing the signs,” Sedar said, “but I’m going to have to check on it, because a lot of the signs are around my face. I might have to come up with some new ones.”

Add that to the list of old habits Sedar and other men in uniform are trying to break as they attempt to safely play a 60-game regular season. Sedar is entering his 14th season on the big league coaching staff, making him the team’s longest-tenured coach. He is entering his 10th year as third-base coach.

When baseball paused due to the coronavirus pandemic, Sedar headed home to Florida for the first six weeks, where he and his wife, Marsha, made hundreds of cloth masks. It was a labor of love, considering that Sedar’s stepdaughter, Nicole, is an ICU nurse at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, and the family was well aware of the need for facial coverings.

The Sedars even made a mask for their dog, Squirt.

“When this first all started happening, there was the [personal protective equipment] shortage,” Sedar said. “We would talk to our daughter [who described the shortage] not so much for the workers but for the family members. Marsha had the idea. The hospital sent us mask diagrams for what they needed. We have ones that are filtered, ones that just have the multiple cloth and we actually went and got one sewing machine. That one wasn’t able to put out the masks that Marsha wanted done, so we went out and got another one.

“She did an excellent job. I was just the pattern cutter -- and maybe at the end a quality-control guy, cutting the extra threads off. We were probably four to five hours a day, sometimes, doing it.’’

How is Squirt handling all of the changes lately?

“He’s doing fine,” Sedar said. “He doesn’t understand why he’s not Tier 1 at the ballpark. He’s staying home. We’re looking into that.’’

Minor Leaguers finding work
More and more Brewers Minor Leaguers are finding spots to play in independent ball this summer, including infield prospect Lucas Erceg and 2020 MLB Draft pick Hayden Cantrelle. Erceg, who once ranked among MLB Pipeline’s Top 30 Brewers prospects, now ranks No. 26 on that list, and was left off the list of players invited to Milwaukee’s alternate training site in Appleton, Wis.

Erceg is set to play in Sugar Land, Texas, in the Constellation Energy League, a temporary league consisting of four teams scheduled to play 56 games apiece. It’s to be determined which team Erceg will join, but another Brewers Minor Leaguer, David Hamilton, is playing in that league for “Team Texas,” managed by Roger Clemens and his son, Koby.

Hamilton was the Brewers’ eighth-round Draft pick in 2019 but missed the entire season while recovering from an Achilles injury. Finding work in independent ball means he won’t have to sit out two seasons in a row.

Four other Brewers players are to take part in another temporary league, the City of Champions cup in Joliet, Ill. Cantrelle, a shortstop drafted by the Brewers in the fifth round in 2020, and outfielder Terence Doston will play for a team called the “Nerds Herd,” outfielder Korry Howell will play for the Slammers, and outfielder Andre Nnebe will play for Deep Dish.

Another outfielder, LG Castillo, will play in Buffalo’s Muny AAA League. It is not a professional independent league, but consists primarily of college players.