According to a report by Jeff Passan of ESPN, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred told MLB Players Association executive director Tony Clark on Friday that if the sport doesn’t do a better job of managing the coronavirus, it could shut down for the season.
Tensions and concerns continue to rise throughout the league following the outbreak among the Miami Marlins, who have had 21 players that tested positive for the virus.
But alarm bells escalated on Friday, when it was learned that two players from the St. Louis Cardinals also tested positive for the coronavirus.
The Cardinals’ game against the Milwaukee Brewers was postponed on Friday and rescheduled to a doubleheader on Sunday.
Passan added that the conversation between Manfred and Clark was not a threat but a reality check that was relayed to players: “We need to clean this up, because if we don’t, Major League Baseball in 2020 is going to be over.”
With today’s postponement announcement it brings the number of teams being held out of action on Friday to six. The Brewers and Cardinals will join the Marlins, Phillies, Nationals and Blue Jays as teams affected by the fallout from positive tests.
The schedules of the New York Yankees and Baltimore Orioles have also been scrambled a week into a season that had already been delayed and curtailed because of the pandemic, and now may be in jeopardy.
Additinally, Scott Miller of Fox Sports reports that an internal investigation by Major League Baseball found the Marlins were very lapse in following protocols during their Atlanta road trip last weekend.
Many Marlins players were reportedly skirting the coronavirus protocols and were going out, hanging out in bars, etc. Lots of MLB people are very unhappy with Miami, writes Miller.
It hasn’t been a good week for Major League Baseball and they continue to get rocked and thwarted by the coronavirus despite their best efforts to play this shortened season out. The next few days will be very critical and bear watching as MLB tries to navigate through this crisis.
