“It felt like the most meaningless game in the history of the sport,” Carpenter said.

With spring training suspended, the teams have largely been left to make plans as they go. The Milwaukee Brewers, for example, said they would hold an optional workout at their camp in Phoenix on Friday, hold no workouts over the weekend, then have another workout on Monday morning. The workouts would not be open to the public, and players would not be available to the news media until Monday.

The Yankees’ manager, Aaron Boone, said that as far as he knew, players would remain in Tampa, Fla., where the team’s spring training facility is, with pitchers throwing simulated games. The Cardinals said their players would report to camp for a meeting on Friday morning, with the schedule after that to be determined.

“Look at what’s happening around our country right now; there’s a lot of things closing down,” Cardinals President John Mozeliak said. “We view this as a pause, and hopefully it allows us to get into a position where we can resume playing baseball again. But in the short term, this camp will remain open until we sort through some things and understand logistics.”

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Mozeliak added that he had not noticed much concern about the issue until Thursday, when the severity of the pandemic took hold among the players.

“The tone of the clubhouse today, for the first time, I felt like they were very much aware of what was happening and I felt like there was real anxiety in that clubhouse,” Mozeliak said.

Teams will likely allow players to leave camp if they believe they need to be with their families during a time of such uncertainty. But teams also do not want to squander their work from the first month of spring training, with its gradual, carefully scripted work schedule designed to prepare players for a six- or seven-month grind.