After the Marlins’ outbreak, the Yankees stay inside and wait for the Phillies

PHILADELPHIA – The news came Monday morning via a cell phone app used for internal communication: The game scheduled hours later between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Yankees is off, no one can go to Citizens Bank Park and wait any longer. updates.

The concerned Yankees players knew exactly why. The Phillies had just completed a three-game series at home against the Miami Marlins, who had 14 members of their travel group who tested positive for the coronavirus.

While Phillies players and employees were screened Monday and the stadium was disinfected, the Yankees were instructed to kidnap at their hotel in Philadelphia while awaiting confirmation that they would play Tuesday as originally planned. After breakfast, Yankees players met around noon to discuss the situation and reiterate the fragility of the season and the need to strictly follow health and safety protocols. Some traced ways to exercise or play inside the hotel.

This is Major League Baseball’s downtime in the midst of a pandemic as its teams, with growing concern from baseball officials and health experts, try to play a 60-game season in 30 stadiums across the country.

“You try to do your best on an individual level to follow the rules to a T,” Yankees relief pitcher Adam Ottavino said Monday. “But it’s just a thin ice skating situation and I think it will be anything.”

While there were relatively few cases, as each team had three weeks of preseason training in their home stadiums, this was always a difficult part for MLB: teams traveling for games and entering hot spots like Florida, Georgia, and Texas. . The Marlins played two exhibition games in Atlanta prior to their three-game set in Philadelphia.

It is unclear when and how the Marlins were infected, given the virus’s incubation period of at least a few days. But the episode brought home the message to the Yankees that reducing their exposure to the virus requires a large dose of individual commitment to the circumstances that players can control.

“We all have a responsibility to keep ourselves as safe as possible during these times,” Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner said last week, “and what one or two of us do can affect the entire team or the entire league.”

To help prevent infections among players, coaches and key personnel, the league, with input from the players’ union, instituted a 113-page operations manual for the season that includes details on how teams should behave while traveling. Among the many regulations: not eating in public restaurants, a preference for private airports, an empty seat next to each person on the team bus, and a private entrance, check-in area, and floors in each hotel.

Members of a team’s travel group should “avoid leaving” the hotel for “non-essential purposes,” according to the MLB handbook. As for hotel visitors, the manual says that apart from “immediate family,” members of a team’s travel group are discouraged from socializing with other family and friends while traveling. If they choose to do so, “they must adhere to strict physical distancing protocols and wear appropriate gloves and face covers,” the manual continued.

Instead of arriving at the stadium many hours before a road game as usual, the Yankees (2-1) are doing so much later now and preparing for a game at the hotel. The players said the Yankees provided rooms at their hotel in Washington and Philadelphia, where they could thoroughly study reports of early exploration and receive a massage or treatment, after making an appointment with their training staff, before arriving at the stadium. And, as allowed by MLB rules, they had exclusive use of the hotel’s gym for exercise.

“Being able to prepare for and receive treatment at the hotel has actually been great,” Yankees relief pitcher Zack Britton said over the weekend.

Rather than spend a day off doing whatever they want, like sightseeing or snacking on a meal or drinks, Yankees players said Gerrit Cole, the team’s new $ 324 million pitcher, and Gardner, the longest-running Yankee. They organized a meat dinner inside a banquet hall. from the team hotel during their day off in Washington on Friday. The players said they sat a certain distance away and watched other baseball games on television.

“I’m not sure what it will look like in the future, but the most important thing we are doing is trying to stay in the hotel and be safe and healthy,” said Britton.

Before the Yankees left on their first road trip this season, first baseman Luke Voit said they all received a travel kit that included materials they could use to disinfect their hotel rooms. As another precaution, the Yankees brought in their own Yankee Stadium clubhouse staff to avoid using visiting clubhouse staff at Citizens Bank Park.

Yankees starter JA Happ, who was originally scheduled to start Monday against the Phillies, said Sunday that the team was already following a pattern of good habits, including distance and wearing off-field masks.

But this is an imperfect science. Much has to go well. Some players still bump all five and spit, which are banned this season. The teams are in charge of monitoring themselves. Players not only have to worry about their own behavior, but also that of loved ones around them. In the NBA, some players have already been asked to retire after breaking the rules of their so-called bubble outside of Orlando, Florida.

The Yankees have had a positive case since the team met in early July: All-Star closer Aroldis Chapman. Yankees general manager Brian Cashman recently said 15 people who were close to Chapman underwent daily testing for a week, but no other positive cases emerged. Ottavino said that demonstrated why protocols beyond testing are so important.

“But now this shows how easy it is to spread,” he said, referring to the Marlins outbreak. “The real problem is that it is very difficult to know.”

Ottavino said the Phillies’ test results will be revealing. Two of his players, catcher JT Realmuto and first baseman Rhys Hoskins, were in closest contact with the Marlins on the field given their positions. The Yankees were also evaluated Monday, but at their hotel as part of their scheduled exams every other day.

Until the results of the Phillies arrive and the Yankees know what they will do on Tuesday, they planned to stay inside and wait.