The Brooklyn Nets season has been altered because then Mayor Bill DeBlasio instituted a COVID19 vaccine mandate for private employers. As a result, Kyrie Irving was only permitted to play in road games. What made the rule obtuse was road players who had not been vaccinated could play in Brooklyn.

However, the rules are the rules. The same goes for when the indoor vaccine mandates were lifted with the private employer ones in place. As a result, Irving could attend Nets games, but he could not play in them.

Of course, the easy answer would be for Irving to get the vaccine. That goes without saying, but we also know he isn’t. More than that, we do know there are going to be baseball players who do not have the vaccine. With the vaccine mandates still in place, yes even for outdoor games played for a private employer, there are potentially going to be New York Mets and New York Yankees players who have not been vaccinated.

As we have seen by and through the reports of Mike Puma of the New York Post, Francisco Lindor, Max Scherzer, Jeff McNeil, and Robinson Cano have been vaccinated. When presented with the question, Jacob deGrom, Brandon Nimmo, Pete Alonso, and J.D. Davis declined to answer. Then, there is Jordan Yamamoto, who took a completely different approach to answering the question en route to being the first player optioned to minor league Spring Training:

“It’s a very divisive topic that people use to portray someone as a bad guy or a good person,” Mets Jordan Yamamoto said about vaccines. “That’s why I don’t believe that any of these things should be talked about. It’s one of those topics like abortion…" https://t.co/58dVrkabpu

— Dennis Young (@dpyoung13) March 17, 2022

Now, it is important to note declining to answer is not exactly the same thing as not being vaccinated. Also, as we saw with Aaron Rodgers saying you are vaccinated or “innoculated” doesn’t definitively mean you received the COVID19 vaccine. Moreover, as we saw with Antonio Brown, actually having a vaccine card doesn’t mean you’re vaccinated.

Whatever the case, sooner or later, we will discover which Mets have been vaccinated. If they are, they will be eligible to play games at Citi Field. If they’re not, they can’t, and the Mets are going to have to figure out how exactly to fill their roster spots. Like Irving, the simplest solution is for those players to get vaccinated, and it’s possible those players still might as that mandate does not appear to be getting lifted anytime soon.