4:05pm: Major League Baseball has formally announced the postponement of this weekend’s Jays/Phillies series and issued the following statement:
Out of an abundance of caution, the Philadelphia Phillies’ three-game weekend series with the Toronto Blue Jays, scheduled for Saturday, August 1st and Sunday, August 2nd at Citizens Bank Park, has been postponed. Major League Baseball will coordinate with health experts and the Major League Baseball Players Association in planning for the Phillies’ resumption of play, and will provide further scheduling updates as necessary.
12:34pm: The scheduled weekend series between the Phillies and Blue Jays has been postponed, Toronto skipper Charlie Montoyo tells reporters including Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet.ca (via Twitter). For the time being, the Jays will hang tight in D.C. and await further word after wrapping up their series with the Nats.
This adds to a still-building MLB scheduling pile-up that will require increasingly convoluted mid-season adaptations. The hope had been that the Marlins’ COVID-19 breakout would stay within that club. But it emerged this morning that two non-player members of the Phillies organization have come down with infections.
With two teams sidelined, their planned opponents are also on ice. In this case, the Jays and Nats may actually end up hanging out waiting in the same place. There’s no word yet whether the league will somehow attempt to stage contests between those two organizations in order to keep logging games.
This season is hanging by a thread….
Not really. Two teams that played each other are having issues, one isn’t even that serious as of yet (2 non players). Of course, be dramatic as you wish.
How can you say two teams not playing isn’t serious?? It’s ridiculous and surely enough to cancel the season. Surely if these teams were the Dodgers and the Yankees the season would be canceled already.
Haworth is making dangerous statements. Do not make light of the impact. It is very serious and very severe. Marlins AAA owner just died from covid – respect would be caution, not throwing caution to the wind.
No, Haworth is making sense, unlike the rest of you going through the usual hysterics.
@cprstupebdous
“Dangerous statements?” Get out of here. A statement that isn’t in agreement with you on the topic of anything does not automatically become “dangerous.” Then again, this is a dangerous statement…
I think they’re referring to flippant dismissal of a potentially life-threatening virus with unknown long-term effects, not having their feelings hurt that someone has a different opinion
I think you need to read again. I said the season was not hanging by a thread. Not sure why y’all need to go into freak out mode. Didn’t say one thing or infer one thing about C19
In a normal season there are dozens of rain outs in the first few weeks. They can deal with this. Not like they are dying.
Don’t call me surely, Shirley
@Hawthorn If you didn’t infer one thing about C19, then what “issues” are the Phillies and Marlins dealing with? This whole post is about more C19 postponements, and those “issues” you yourself mention are C19 issues.
I can understand if someone doesn’t think this (and the potential for more infection spread and postponing) will derail the season, but I also can understand why someone would think saying things like “it’s just two teams working through an issue, don’t be dramatic” is a dangerous and callous outlook with a virus that the US hasn’t been able to contain.
@p4dr35 The difference is that over a 6-month season with regularly scheduled off days, there’s way more flexibility to make up those games.
And, perhaps more importantly, missing one game in a 60-game season is equivalent to missing nearly three games in a 162-game season. If the Marlins miss 6 games total, that’s equivalent to about 16 games (or 10% of the entire season)
Can’t deal with playing 55 games in 60 days. There will be more rain outs and covid cancellations on top of all these. Just wait until the California and Texas teams start going through this, not to mention Tampa and the NY teams. Then add their opponents to the mix. I give this season three more weeks, tops.
How about these players like Trout and Harper with babies due? Do they quarantine for 2 weeks BEFORE going home and to the delivery rooms? Doubtful.
Apologize. Hope I didn’t come off too surly.
It’s Haworth, and again you are failing to comprehend my response and/or are reading into it. As I said, I was responding to the original post, in context I’m referring to the season. Never said anything about Covid in the terms you are trying to say.
Hayworth has NOT made any dangerous statement
Haworth you did NOT say one thing about Covid. You are correct. Some just have an agenda.
Explicitly stating it’s not serious when individuals have tested positive is careless and callous. I sincerely hope you never have to experience a serious situation, such as this, and hear others say it’s not serious. I understand if you view the nature of the statement as political, but please do not make implications on my behalf.
People like you who downplay the seriousness of every situation are why we’re in this mess to begin with.
WiffleBall, why do you overplay it? We had one (or a few players) on one team that broke protocol. This has caused a chain of events that currently seems under control.
Can it break out of control?… sure. But it’s not there yet. As far as the Marlins, they are the team that broke protocol. I don’t care if they field AAA players the rest of the year. They have forfeited their right to compete.
Emotional response in regards to what I posted.
If 150,000 dead and millions of positives isn’t out of control (both numbers lead the world BTW) I don’t know what is.
Of course there’s always the people who don’t want to hear stats because it blows a hole in their beliefs.
Context is important, raw numbers are not all that valuable without it. I’m not going to get into a C19 debate. What I will say is that the original post was about the season hanging by a thread, I said it wasn’t as it was isolated to that series (mostly one team right now), and that somehow morphed into C19 due to a few not reading the comment for what it was.
“If 150,000 dead and millions of positives isn’t out of control ”
And what’s the mortality rate of fully healthy people between the ages of 21-35.? This is not an indiscriminate killer. Have we even had a serious illness among the players yet? The worst illness is described as a “minor” heart condition.
Using that data to say it’s out of control in baseball is over-blowing it.
They’ve postponed at least 15% of the entire season for two teams. Postponing one week of play in a 9.5-week season isn’t insignificant, even if this is the only blip and the games are made up via double-headers and creative scheduling.
We’re in the situation after less than ONE WEEK. How can anyone be certain more outbreaks and delays are unlikely? All it takes is another couple of outbreaks to complete derail the schedule and jeopardize the whole year.
I guess this aged well Haworth… Ignorant and foolish.
At this point the season is hanging by a Phillies players coronavirus test results.
If you come out of this without any players infected it shows you can survive having ‘infected’ players on the field come into contact with uninfected players on the opposite team.
The problem would then be the ‘indoor’ aspects. Those protocols need to then be tightened significantly with mandatory mask wearing and increased social distancing.
:Less time indoors would be preferable. Players receiving treatment would be exempt, but also need to practice more distancing/mask wearing. Perhaps players should arrive dressed in uniform.
60 games over 66 days with Covid around was the ridiculous part. I don’t know if they’ll be able to push the playoffs back a week or two but that seems like the easiest solution to make up for the inevitable make up games that will need to be played.
This thought exactly is the danger of small sample size. Even if the Phillies start having positive player tests, you can’t then make the sweeping generalization that it’s impossible to have players on the field together without infecting each other. Likewise if the Phillies don’t have any positive tests, you can’t just assume that playing together on the same field is safe.
This a single data point. One. There needs to be more before any conclusions are drawn, and the MLB would be foolish to hinge a season on one game.
There are plenty of data-points showing that the virus is not under control here, and no data suggesting sports can be safely played in places where it is not under control.
People are applying the same logic to these tiny pandemic sample sizes as they do to the season’s first week of stats.
“Mike Yastrzemski is slugging .600, he’s the Giants’ future All Star outfielder for the next five years!”
“No outside players infected four days after the Marlins’ outbreak, so no risk for cross-team infection ever!”
well technically it’s safe no one will die
Using data from crowded cities cannot be applied to the baseball field, that’s two completely different environments. If the players follow the protocols in place, the issue is transmission ON THE FIELD, not in general society.
It’s an expectation of the players and team management to ensure that personnel are following the isolation procedures necessary for separation of these two environments.
“At this point the season is hanging by a Phillies players coronavirus test results.”
I’m not sure that’s the case, but if it breaks out in the Phillies clubhouse, the season is certainly over.
And again, I would love to know the Marlins players that broke protocol and caused the cancellation of the season.
Yeah. This is not going to work. Letting players go home (or wherever) and be exposed to the virus is guaranteed to result in more positive tests. Its not if, its when.
This is getting ridiculous for the Jays. They literally can’t go home, have to play in a minor league stadium (someday), are playing home games on the road, and now don’t know when, where, or who they might play again.
Meanwhile, things are humming along nicely here in Edmonton with the NHL
The answer is simple. Make the teams quarantine their 30 man rosters and coaches that are compromised, and ship off the rest of their 60 man rosters with aaa coaches/managers.
They COULD play their normal schedules. They just don’t want to with the available personnel.
Any reason the Nats and Jays shouldn’t just continue playing each other this weekend? The Marlins and Phillies can get an extra round against one another if they ultimately get cleared later on.
Not a perfectly balanced schedule at this point but who cares. I’d rather see the Nats and Jays continue to play rather than sit around doing nothing.
That’s ridiculous.. this is completely under control .. geez
It is under control. This is precautionary. That’s why they are doing this. If Phillies players start testing positive, then you can say it’s out of control.
Blue Jays are having so many issues this season.
This is getting ridiculous
Gonna be a lot of doubleheader’s
Gonna be a lot of double headers
7 inning double-headers at that …smh
Kind of ridiculous to cancel this series tbh.
If this is the reaction you’re going to have now 4 days after they played you might as well end the Marlins and Phillies seasons and start playing with 28 teams, and little by little eliminate until you have a champion.
Or don’t play at all.
But if they realistically wanted to play this season they needed to be willing to assume some risk and the Phillies continuing to play is really risk they need to assume if they want to make it work
Of course it’s ridiculous. But they know they will be villified in the media if they don’t go overboard with precautions. Just like every other business is practically forced to do.
The Marlins had more players test positive today. The Phillies received two positive tests from their organization today. A home clubhouse attendant and a member of the coaching staff. No players yet, but the assumption is more positive cases are coming. It’s not ridiculous to cancel the series. The Marlins have been ravaged by this virus and it’s quickly spreading to the Phillies. It’s absolutely the right thing to cancel the series. Stop the spread now.
The risk was that at some point there would be an outbreak that would effect some team. The plan was to increase the player pool (to upwards of 60) to be able to continually replace those infected to be able to continue playing without having to worry about the season needing to be suspended. They set their contingency (and priority) to allow them to recoup the millions lost by having to delay the start of the season.
I’m sure no one expected half a team to go down and worse that there was the possibility of spreading the virus to visiting teams (and perhaps, worse, via a clubhouse employee) less than four days into the season. So now two teams will have lost 6 games that may or may not be fully made-up and more importantly, with just the beginning of all teams traveling to unfamiliar cities and stadiums across the country.
The question is how many more teams and positive results will MLB be willing to allow with all their built in safe practices to continue playing. And does anyone seriously think that adding a dozen compliance officers to monitor the situation Or even worse, before any player/coach/ personnel comes down with serious symptoms that truly become life threatening. Don’t forget Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriquez is dealing with complications with his heart from Covid-10 as we speak.
The season is still “barely plausible” but one more outbreak would be fatal.
Just relax guys… .no need to worry unless Covid spreads and infects more teams and 5+ players each… I don’t get how MLB is not putting in a stringent bubble like the NHL.
I don’t know the whole stotry but it could be a number of irresponsible Marlins players that started this crap… in that case, if they can’t stay in a safe bubble, just screw them!! The season can go on without them!!!
Can’t wait to see how the NHL playoffs goes… seems like they do have a plan in place where players stay in a controlled environment and I assume all personnel serving them got proper PPE’s.
Enough with the bubble talk. The NHL is finishing just the playoffs. The MLB has 60 games, playoffs, 1800 players in the pool, coaches, personnel, and plays outdoors where weather becomes an issue. The bubble idea was never a viable option.
MLB could have made a bubble work. 3 bubble cities…1 per region. Dome or retractable roof. Multiple games a day. Only need to bubble the 25-30 active members of team. The pool of players done in other location. Reduce travel costs also. If you don’t make playoffs team leaves at end of season.
Let’s go over this again…
Baseball games and teams play nearly every single day, NBA and NHL teams do not. Arizona and Texas gets extremely hot, so only night games would be played. Florida rains a lot.
You need 15 fields nearly every single day. NBA and NHL can rotate between a few venues. It was hard enough to deliver a AAA stadium like Buffalo. Baseball would have needed 3 hub cities and it’s extremely doubtful they had the venues to do it.
hate the Marlins. hate em.
Poor Blue Jays. What a mess.
Thank God this season is only 2 months and won’t mess up 2021. Only saving grace.
I’m not at all confident that 2021 is safe yet.
This kind of headache only helps the young Jays.
I agree. Helps Bo and Randal recover from injury and re-focuses the young guys struggling at the plate to start the year.
Baseball has a *Florida Man* problem.
That team needs to be punished in the severest way imaginable.
You’ve go to be kidding me. Meanwhile the rest of the league is carrying on, getting better, getting reps and playing competitive games as we sit on our hands.
Phillies are done. Even if their season isn’t canceled, they can’t come back from this. They’re getting ice cold and will have to get their timing back. J.T. Realmuto trade is now one of the worst in Phillies history because he only played a season and 3 games. The 3 games the Phillies did play were pretty terrible. It’s all super depressing to be a Phillies fan right now.
Christ Von, ya gotta take a step back and chill.
Haha. I’m sorry, but It’s super depressing. The Phillies can’t afford this. It’s the right move to put them on ice, but all this waiting is going to hurt them. And they already looked awful in that first series. Even if they extend J.T. that trade is historically bad now. They will almost certainly have less than 60 games now, and their schedule was already seen as one of the hardest in the league. There is absolutely no reason to be optimistic as a Phillies fan right now. It’s not important in the scheme of things of course, and I’m just hoping everyone involved recovers quickly, but man….so much excitement for baseball just ruined…potentially because of another team’s reckless actions.
I’m a Braves fan, so I’m biased the other way: Not playing the Blue Jays/Yankees is a win overall if win percentage becomes the deciding factor. You could win 29 games out of 50 with the Braves winning 34 out of 60, and win the division, despite playing Baltimore and not the Yankees and Blue Jays. It’s not going to be fair no matter what.
Look at the bright side. The Phillies now have a seven game non-losing streak.
These games are postponed, not canceled. If the Phillies are ever able to play, they will have to play a bunch of 7-inning double headers against the Yankees and Blue Jays in a shortened amount of time using a lot of backup players. It’s unfair for all teams involved including the Yankees and Blue Jays.
You do know that I was being facetious, right?
Oh absolutely. Apologies. I was replying to Outfield Dunsel there. Your comment was hilarious and sad, but true. I give it a thumbs up.
Von this could be a blessing in-disguise.
The struggling players can get re-set. The team can scoreboard watch and see exactly what they must do and what they need moving forward. They will know what is in-front of them when they return to action. They might also benefit from the 7-inning games.
Glass half full thoughts for ya.
MLB may have overreacted or may have acted in an abundance of caution. We don’t even know if these Phillies employees had any contact with the Marlins or their clubhouse. But suspect MLB wants to see if any players eventually test positive.
There is no way MLB can make up all these games. May have to just live with each team getting as many games as possible and playoffs may be determined by winning percentage and not just win totals.
The sun is setting.
Maybe it is in your time zone. It’s only 12:14pm(PST) here. Got another 8 hours before the sun sets.
Can’t the play virtually using XBox or something ? This would solve a lot of issues. Baseball is rigged anyway just ask anyone
Phils/Jays live tonight on MLB The Show 2020. At least there will be fans at the game!
Just keep playing the Jays. Ive enjoyed the series thus far.
Season ends in less than a week
Wanna bet?
You can’t bet with Setzer. You may get Joker’s Death.
i dont even care if our team doesnt play anymore the rest if the year. let the other 28 play. no reason the Marlins of all teams should ruin the year for everybody.
Challenge is reconfiguring the postseason again. Do you still take the top 2 teams from the NL East? Who do they play instead of the Marlins? That’s more schedule disparity. I don’t disagree, its just not going to be fair no matter what (as I said in a comment above)
I really want details. Right now I have more contempt for the Marlins than the Astros.
We know nothing. I don’t believe unconfirmed rumors about strip clubs. If true, then I’m almost with you. I still have more contempt for the Astros, but I’d really hate the Marlins too.
i certainly dont believe its a strip club because that’s just because of the Williams buzz, but i can believe they went out to dinner or someting somewhere. if it was a strip club thats up there with Williams and Gobert levels of stupid.
Such a bummer. Fingers crossed for the Phils to be able to play at some point.
If you morons would just wear a mask and practice social distancing like the rest of the planet this could be mitigated
The rest of the planet? My brother sent me a picture of a corner bar in Queens (he described it as some kind of Salsa dancing party with one guy dancing on the hood of a car) as he was driving by that was packed in and outside with few people wearing masks.
I do get you point, though. I’m surprised so many players on the Astros and Dodgers didn’t even consider social distancing when the benches cleared.
I was referring to the entire country. The amount of people that protested wearing masks and then got quite sick is disturbing
Steveo,
Masks don’t do a great job of preventing the wearer from getting the illness, they do a much better job of preventing someone who is sick from spreading the illness.
Not wearing a mask is a selfish imbecilic act. I don’t know how else to say it.
I couldn’t agree more!
I agree, steveo37. We often hear ballplayers refer to themselves as “grown men.” It would help if they would act the part. Anyone who has watched games on TV has seen ballplayers standing shoulder to shoulder at the dugout rail, not wearing masks, spitting, always spitting. As far as I can tell, managers, coaches, and front office executives are powerless to teach these avatars of manly independence that part of being “grown” is accepting responsibility for the consequences of their conduct on the lives of others, and adopting conduct that might mitigate the harm their indifference might cause.
Baseball has a difficult decision ahead: do they pull the plug on the Marlins (and possibly the Phillies, too), or allow further outbreaks that will end the season throughout MLB?
I wonder if the ultimate solution for the Marlins is to waive the 40-man rules, cobble together a team from the alternate team and waiver wire/FA pickups, and use the coaching staff from the alternate team to operate as the Marlins team until, one by one, the regular Marlins are cleared and exit the quarantine.
Hopefully, the Phillies situation is resolved after the weekend, and I think we all hope without any positives beyond the current coach and clubhouse staff.
There’s no reason to pull the plug. This is why there is a 60 player pool. The depth of a team’s pool and how well that team guards against the virus should do better than teams that don’t.
From your comment ctyank7, the nation would have to stop, for example. food production if a few workers tested positive. But we don’t do this. If one plant gets hit others keep going while those that are infected clean up and resume.
Losing Marlins games was one thing, but now all the game cancellations are messing with my fantasy team, so it’s time to take this seriously.
Now that’s the best post on here. :)
At least Miami doesn’t have much in the way of fantasy value on their roster. I lost Realmuto for a week so far at a weak position for reinforcements.
So lets review — this week and weekend for postponements—
Phils lose 6 games, plus maybe 3 more in Miami
Marlins lose 5 games and maybe 3 more in Miami
Nats lose 3 games this weekend
Jays lose 4 games vs Philly
Yanks lose 2 games
Orioles lose 2 games
equals 28 possible games
That is one heck of a domino effect — get out the duct tape Manfred.
One Marlin in a strip club—very unlikely boys.
They should just have the Jays play the Nationals this weekend and that mitigates most of the missed games, oustide of Miami/Philadelphia. Considering Miami/Philly are supposed to play each other the first of next week, that buys a lot of time for those teams.
Dead Zone Season 2 Episode 14.
Just watch it.
How about we let the Phillies pick any one player from the Marlins as compensation for the Fish ruining the start to the season. A little frontier justice, since awarding them a tie breaker for the playoffs, when the Marlins are involved, is a joke in itself.
can we have Sixto back?
All this animosity is good for the young Jays core. They’ll get extra reps in the cage and the pitchers will get extra time to build up stamina.
Adversity?
Covid has been really mean to the Blue Jays.
The Jays are taking the brunt of the hostility towards MLB. If anything they deserve more support, not errant finger pointing.
I suspect the current punching bag is the Marlins. Kinda took the bullseye and ran with it.
I never saw the Blue Jays as having the bulleye – more a target for laughs and pity.
Going to take the glass half full approach to this news; MLB is now being necessarily cautious about even one or two infections. This is the route they should’ve taken over the weekend with the Marlins. Hopefully they’ve learned their lesson.
Wonder how many total games have been postponed? In a short season, make ups could get tricky.
It didn’t take the Marlins long to blow up the season. 28 games already lost and who knows how many more. How long before another dominoes scenario starts. This season was a joke before it really began. Can we just dissolve the Marlins franchise right now?
I guess double headers for the Phillies and Marlins for the rest of the season.