MLB to Close Marlins and Phillies, Review Schedule Amid COVID-19 Outbreak

The 2020 season doesn’t even have a week and MLB already has a COVID-19 crisis on their hands. Up to 17 members of the Miami Marlins, including 15 players, have tested positive in recent days.. The outbreak forced postpone Monday and Tuesday games in Miami and Philadelphia, where the Marlins played last weekend.

In an effort to minimize the interruption of the season while the outbreak is contained, MLB will review the schedule and isolate the Marlins and Phillies for a period of time, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. Both clubs are currently undergoing additional testing and it is unclear when they will be able to play safely again, especially the Marlins, who have lost half of their active roster.

The Miami season has been temporarily halted until at least Monday, Aug. 3, according to Marlins reporter Craig Mish. That gives the club time to regroup and adjust its roster as necessary. The Phillies will be closed until at least Friday, Tyler Kepner of New York Times reports. MLB has yet to confirm the news.

The Yankees and Orioles are spectators at the outbreak. The Yankees were scheduled to play four games with the Phillies this week (two in Philadelphia and two in New York), while the Orioles would play four games with the Marlins (two in Miami and two in Baltimore). The revised schedule has the Yankees and Orioles playing Wednesday and Thursday instead of sitting idle.

The Marlins were scheduled to play a three-game series against the Nationals this weekend. The vast majority of Nationals players voted not to travel to Miami for security reasons.Although MLB has the final decision. It’s unclear what the Nationals will do this weekend while the Marlins are on hiatus. Here, for the sake of exposing everything, this is what the revised calendar would look like:

Tuesday, July 28	vs. BAL PPD	vs. NYY PPD	at MIA PPD	in PHI PPD
Wednesday, July 29	at BAL PPD	in NYY PPD	vs. MINE vs. NYY	vs. PHI at BAL
Thursday, July 30	at BAL PPD	in NYY PPD	vs. MINE vs. NYY	vs. PHI at BAL
Friday, July 31	vs. WAS PPD	at TOR	vs TB	vs. BOS
Sat, Aug 1	vs. WAS PPD	at TOR	vs TB	vs. BOS
Sun August 2	vs. WAS PPD	at TOR	vs TB	vs. BOS
Monday August 3	OFF	OFF	vs. NYY	at BAL
Tuesday August 4	vs. PHI	at MIA	vs. NYY	at BAL

If the next schedule is reviewed, MLB would try to make up all postponed games later in the season through doubleheads and eliminating days off. If not possible, the MLB is set up to allow teams to end the season with an uneven number of games played, and determine the postseason field with winning percentage, according to Joel Sherman of New York Post.

That wouldn’t be ideal, obviously, but there is a precedent. The teams ended with an uneven number of games around the 1981 strike, some teams played up to 111 games that season, while others played just 103, and the ranking was based on the winning percentage. In these adverse times, a similar strategy would be warranted this year.

COVID-19 has an incubation period of up to 14 days with a median of five days, meaning that if any Phillies players and staff were exposed during the Marlins series over the weekend, they may not appear in tests on Monday and Tuesday. The safest approach would be to wait for other days and retest before allowing the club to resume play.

Despite the outbreak, Commissioner Rob Manfred said Monday that the owners have not yet seriously discussed canceling the season.. The league believes it has established mechanisms (60-man roster, taxi squad, etc.) to handle an outbreak and continue playing. Now MLB is apparently ready to revise the schedule on the fly to make it work.