At the close of Opening Weekend, the cracks in Major League Baseball's plan started to show.
The Miami Marlins scratched Sunday's starting pitcher Jose Ureña due to COVID-19, and with three other Marlins testing positive, the club altered its plans to fly home from Philadelphia.
Over in Cincinnati, Matt Davidson tested positive for coronavirus after playing in the opener, and Mike Moustakas and Nick Senzel were scratched from Sunday's game after feeling ill.
Now the clubhouse dominoes are falling, and now so are the games.
The Marlins' home opener against Baltimore is postponed because 12 players and two coaches tested positive for COVID-19. Having just left Philadelphia, the New York Yankees expressed reservations about being the next team to play at Citizens Bank Park. That game is now postponed.
I don't know where the league goes from here. If the season couldn't last a weekend without one team having to replenish a roster, it's hard to see how it get through the remaining 57 games without it looking like a meat grinder. At the same time, Major League Baseball refused to put a strict outbreak course of action in its protocol. The Korean Baseball Organization had an automatic two-week shutdown in its plans, but MLB seems intent to power through obstacles with sheer will despite the implications (the early testing foibles, relocating the Blue Jays), so I don't see Rob Manfred backing down immediately.
The teams might not be inclined to give in, either. The Marlins didn't give a second thought to playing Sunday's game despite the hazards, which is the public-health equivalent of Reynaldo López's private-health issue of trying to finish the first inning on Sunday with an increasingly sore shoulder.
But even if the schedule slogs on, this will have reverberations around the league.
Don Mattingly said the regular season was a whole different world than the training camp bubble they all enjoyed.
"It feels safer in Miami than anywhere," Mattingly said. "You feel safe at the ballpark; I feel safe with my surroundings going home. It's a lot scarier on the road."
In Cincinnati, Tigers manager Ron Gardenhire -- an at-risk individual given his age (62) and bout with prostate cancer in 2017 -- expressed concerns about what his team was exposed to while playing the Reds.
“Those are the moments we talk about in taking care of yourself,” Gardenhire said. “You know it’s going to happen at some time or another. It’s unfortunate and myself, a Tier 1 guy (with the highest team access) who’s been through a lot, when I started hearing that I get nervous. I really do. I can honestly tell you that. I start thinking about it awful hard."
The Cubs are the next team headed to Cincinnati, and they're wondering what they're going to find.
“We were just talking about it, some of the guys,” Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo said about a half-hour after the game. “It’s definitely something to be concerned about; if a clubhouse guy went over to their locker room, things like that, and making sure that locker room’s deep cleaned.
“I’m definitely going to be paying attention to the [Reds weekend opponent] Tigers now to see if a couple guys pop positive."
These quotes jumped out to me as the White Sox embark on their first trip out of Chicago since the season was put on hold. They're starting a three-games series in Cleveland tonight, and reporters are saying the league has no wider plan to hold up the greater schedule. Everything, however, is subject to change.
(Citizens Bank Park photo by Eric Okurowski)
