COVID-19 Outbreak scares MLB restart

No game tonight because of the outbreak of COVID-19 that the Miami Marlins have had in their clubhouse with five more players testing positive for COVID-19 bringing the total to 14 people in the Marlins organization who have tested positive. The Marlins are still in Philadelphia and have cancelled their home opener today against Orioles.

From the outset of the plan to bring back baseball this year what the Marlins are going through was one of the biggest questions to answer. The solution before the question was a reality was to expand the rosters to 30 players, now the number of players isn’t important, the health of an entire ball club is. The outbreak with the Marlins was one of my biggest concerns with bringing back any sports in 2020 with the COVID-19 Pandemic and why I have been cautious with all of my excitement around sports since all of the plans have been finalized, but now again, the ball is in the glove of the owners to react correctly to the situation that is causing a problem for their sport.

Personally I don’t know if this is a death sentence for the season for the rest of baseball, but it makes the question of “how do you play a year without a team for two weeks,” a serious concern and makes the challenge to finish a season immensely tougher. Thinking more and more about the severity of this disease makes me air on the side of caution and have all the sports leagues cancel their seasons and poor millions of dollars into research and finding the cure/vaccination for COVID-19. I love watching baseball (I watched 8 innings of the Mets-Braves game last night before watching five of the Giants-Dodgers game) and I love watching sports, but the health of the athletes and the people of this country is more important than the happiness watching brings me. However, for now, there will be a game tomorrow and the possibilityof suiting up tomorrow so let’s go over the interesting situation this cancellation brings the Bronx Bombers.

No game today brings Masahiro Tanaka’s return to the rotation closer and doesn’t put strain on the team to fill his spot. If Tanaka is still on track for Sunday than this gives the team a day off to push back the plans to make up his spot. Happ can go tomorrow and the bullpen day that could’ve happened at the end of the week can be replaced by a Paxton start. This also allows Loaisiga an extra day to recover so you can use him again out of the pen if need be—returning to a more traditional five-man rotation. Until then, like we’ve done throughout the pandemic, we wait in darkness and see if tomorrow will bring better news than what we’ve got today. Here’s to hope and becoming closer to the day that COVID-19 is bested by modern medicine.    


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