The coronavirus forced baseball’s 17th postponement in 10 days on Saturday, prompting at least two more players to opt out of the season entirely and casting doubt on whether the league can complete a truncated 2020 season.
A game between the Cardinals and Brewers in Milwaukee was postponed for the second straight day after one more player and three staff members with St Louis tested positive for the coronavirus. Friday’s series opener between the midwestern rivals had been scuttled only hours before the first pitch due to two Cardinals players testing positive.
Major League Baseball said Thursday it was updating its coronavirus safety measures after a 17th player on the Miami Marlins tested positive for Covid-19, a mere seven days after all 30 clubs opened a shortened, delayed season in empty stadiums.
The Marlins outbreak, which first came to light on Monday after the team played a three-game series on the road against the Philadelphia Phillies, prompted MLB to postpone all of the team’s games through at least Sunday amid doubts the team will be able to reopen its season as planned Tuesday at home.
Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred has reportedly ordered all teams to use surgical masks instead of cloth ones, encouraged players not to leave hotels in road cities except for games and mandated every club to travel with a virus protocol compliance officer to ensure rules are followed. According to an ESPN report, Manfred has warned players union’ executive director Tony Clark that baseball could shut down for the season if it doesn’t do a better job of managing the spread.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the US’s top infectious disease expert, expressed concern over the outbreak when asked about it during an appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America on Tuesday morning.
“This could put [the season] in danger,” Fauci said. “I don’t believe they need to stop, but we just need to follow this and see what happens with other teams on a day-by-day basis.”
The pandemic had already forced MLB to delay and truncate the familiar 162-game, six-month season to a 60-game, 67-day sprint with a number of rule changes designed to speed up the game and protect the players and umpires.
On Saturday, Miami second baseman Isan Diaz and two-time All-Star center fielder Lorenzo Cain of the Brewers became the latest of the more than a dozen major leaguers to opt out of the season entirely, citing the health risks stemming from Covid-19. Others who are playing, like Washington Nationals relief pitcher Sean Doolittle, have expressed ambivalence over baseball’s return as case numbers continue to surge throughout the country.
“We’re trying to bring baseball back during a pandemic that’s killed 130,000 people,” Doolittle said on 5 July. “We’re way worse off as a country than we were in March when we shut this thing down. And, like, look where the other developed countries are in their response to this. We haven’t done any of the things that other countries have done to bring sports back.
“Sports are like the reward of a functioning society. And we’re trying to just bring it back, even though we’ve taken none of the steps to flatten the curve.”
