Miami Marlins outfield postpones 2 games and Rocks M.L.B.'s return

  At least 14 members of the team, including 12 players, have received a positive test result after three games in Philadelphia this weekend. The Yankees' game with the Phillies was also canceled.
Major League Baseball's return took a troubling turn on Monday, when the league's worst fear came true: an outbreak of positive coronavirus testing within a team.

The Miami Marlins postponed their home game against the Baltimore Orioles on Monday - four days after the season opener - after learning that 14 members of the team's travel group, including two coaches, had tested positive for the virus. The outbreak was first reported by ESPN.

"The health of our players and staff has been and will continue to be our primary focus as we navigate these unknown waters," Marlins Chief Executive Derek Jeter said in a statement. "After a successful Spring 2.0, we have now experienced challenges after we set out and left Miami. Postponing today's home game was the right decision to make sure we take a collective break and try to grasp the situation as a whole.

Jeter said the Marlins will stay in Philadelphia, where they played three games against the Phillies over the weekend while they await the results of another round of testing for players and staff. The Phillies were supposed to host the Yankees on Monday, but that game was also postponed.

The Marlins played two exhibition games in Atlanta last week before their series at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, including Sunday's series finale, which was played after Miami learned that four players had tested positive. Manager Don Mattingly changed the starting pitcher for this game - he replaced Jose Urena, who had reportedly tested positive - but later told reporters that the team had "never really considered not playing."

When the games for most teams began Friday, the M.L.B. announced that only six of the 10,939 samples it had conducted this week (or 0.05 percent) were new positive test results. However, most of these tests were carried out while the teams trained in their home parks before travelling to the streets.
The league is trying to host a 60-game season in 30 stadiums in the United States, including an AAA stadium in Buffalo for the Toronto Blue Jays, who have been banned from home games by the Canadian government because of the risk of travel to and from the United States.

Baseball's decision to play games at home venues is different from the N.B.A. and the N.H.L., which are preparing to resume play in so-called bubbles. The N.B.A. hosts players and hosts games at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida, while the N.H.L. uses two locations: Toronto for the Eastern Conference teams and Edmonton for the Western Conference teams.

These leagues also use fewer teams than the M.L.B.; Both were deep in their season when the sport was shut down in mid-March, so the N.H.L. plans to go straight into the playoffs with 24 of 31 participating teams, while the N.B.A. plan affects 22 of its 30 teams.

Selection of editors

Why some mosquitoes prefer people

The teenagers at the end of the world

'A place where everyone can shop' closes its doors
Read the main story
In an interview with The New York Times in May, Rob Manfred, the M.L.B. commissioner, outlined the challenges of where and how a season should be staged.

"One of the things that came up from one of the experts was, 'Man, that's possible by quarantined players,'" Manfred said, later adding, "And then you start a four-and-a-half-month season, and your life will go from hotel to baseball field, back to hotel, room service, not to your family.

"And then we realized, my goodness, that's pretty hard. Then we started talking about family inclusion, and you realized that when you get to this stage, you're going to be quarantined, which is crazy.

Manfred said M.L.B. was considering holding games in three hubs: Arizona for teams in the Western Divisions, Texas for teams in the middle and Florida for teams in the East.

"That makes sense, because these states seem to be more receptive to letting us play," Manfred said.

But when baseball considered the plan, the spread of the virus slowed in some parts of the country, and business began to reopen. Baseball then shifted its focus to playing in stadiums without fans while complying with comprehensive health and safety protocols. In order to reduce travel activity, teams should only play within their geographical divisions.

Still, reduced travel is still travel, with everything it entails - flights, bus rides, check-in and check-out in and out of hotels, transportation of equipment from clubhouse to clubhouse and so on - and even as the league prepared to start the game, it recognized the risk of positive testing. Some of the official safety rules seemed unrealistic and were routinely violated, such as banning clapping and spitting, strict social distancing on the bench, and replacing every ball touched by multiple players.

Since the availability of players is inevitably in flux due to the virus, the teams carry 30 active players (instead of the usual 26), with a pool of 30 additional players available at an alternative training location near the home balls.

The idea, however, was to provide cover for one or two absences, not an outburst like the Marlins experience. The league has known all the time that such an outcome could be devastating.

"If we have one or two teams that are really decimated, with a number of people who have had the virus and can't play for a long time, it could have a real impact on the competition," Manfred said on July 2 on the Dan Patrick Show. "And we would have to think very, very carefully about what we are doing."

That day came quickly and brought a new crisis to Manfred and the owners, which they will have to face during their planned weekly telephone conversation on Monday afternoon.