Belatedly, MLB Addresses Outbreak by Sidelining Marlins and Phillies
In the wake of an outbreak of the coronavirus that has infected 15 Marlins players and two coaches thus far — including four new positive tests reported on Tuesday morning — Major League Baseball showed signs of grasping the gravity of the crisis by backtracking on its previous plan for the team to resume play on Wednesday in Baltimore. Instead, the team’s next two series have been postponed; they won’t play again until at least Tuesday, August 4. The Phillies, whom they faced this past weekend, will be kept out of action until Saturday, August 1 (initially, the plan was for Friday). The postponements affect the Orioles, Yankees, and Nationals, and MLB is in the process of reconfiguring its schedule to absorb the impact of the weekend’s events.
Said MLB in a statement, “Given the current circumstances, MLB believes that it is most prudent to allow the Marlins time to focus on providing care for their players and planning their baseball operations for a resumption early next week.”
The Marlins were initially scheduled to play the Orioles in Miami on Monday and Tuesday, and then in Baltimore on Wednesday and Thursday. In an interview with MLB Network’s Tom Verducci on Monday — by which point the team had at least 13 known infections among players and staff — commissioner Rob Manfred suggested that the Marlins could resume play on Wednesday and Thursday in Baltimore “if the testing results are acceptable.” Even absent Tuesday’s positives, how a double-digit total of infected personnel could be deemed “acceptable” in this context is unclear, but in any case Manfred and the league have seen the light, so now that two-game series has been postponed, as has the Marlins’ three-game set against the Nationals in Miami from July 31-August 2, after which they have a scheduled off day. Per The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, the “vast majority” of Nationals players voted against going to Miami for the series, and while it wasn’t their call to make, it’s noteworthy that the players publicly offered some pushback regarding the league’s plans.
Via the Washington Post’s Dave Sheinin, Nationals manager Dave Martinez said of the vote, “We all decided that it was probably unsafe to go there. It had nothing to do with the Miami Marlins. It was all about Miami and the state of Florida. This pandemic. [Players] didn’t feel safe.”
Whether or not MLB took the Nationals’ point of view into account, the postponement of the series makes sense in light of the circumstances.
As for the Phillies, they have not had any players or coaches test positive in the most recent batch of tests, though ESPN’s Marly Rivera reported that a member of the visiting clubhouse staff at Citizens Bank Park tested positive in a previous round of testing over the weekend. The team was scheduled to play four games against the Yankees this week — Monday and Tuesday in Philadelphia, Wednesday and Thursday in New York — but those games have all been postponed as well. The Phillies will resume play with a doubleheader on Saturday at Citizens Bank Park against the Blue Jays, though they will bat as the visiting team, since the Jays’ temporary new home, Buffalo’s Sahlen Field, is not yet ready for prime time.
Meanwhile, the Yankees will head to Baltimore to play the Orioles on Wednesday and Thursday, “in order to create more scheduling flexibility later in the season,” according to MLB. The league added that additional scheduling during the week of August 3rd would be announced later this week, which Sheinin suggested “probably hints at the Phillies’ scheduled series in Miami on Aug. 4-6 against the Marlins being either moved or postponed; in the event of the latter, the Phillies instead could make up the games against the Yankees that were postponed this week.”
The pause in play will not only allow the testing protocol to identify any additional players or personnel who are infected but also allow the Marlins to remake their roster, perhaps with additional players from outside the organization — they’ve already added relievers Josh D. Smith, Justin Shafer, and Mike Morin off waivers thus far this week, and reported signed Logan Forsythe — as well as ones from their 60-man pool (thankfully, all of the players at their alternate site in Jupiter, Florida have tested negative thus far). How long those players will be tasked with subbing for two members of the starting rotation (Sandy Alcantara and José Ureña) and four lineup regulars (Jorge Alfaro, Garrett Cooper, Harold Ramirez, and Miguel Rojas), all of whom have reportedly tested positive and whose recoveries are not yet confirmed, is unclear.
The hope is that the team can make up most of the postponed games, but that may not be possible, and it appears that the league has reached the same conclusion I did regarding the possibility of teams play differing numbers of games:
Heard MLB would like to get 60-game season in for all teams, but not wedded to it. If some teams play 58, 56, 55, etc, winning pct would determine playoff spots.
— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) July 28, 2020
As both Sherman and Sheinin pointed out, this approach was taken during the strike-torn 1981 season, as teams played unequal totals of games in both “halves.” The NL West’s first “half” and the NL East’s second “half” were both won by teams that had one more win and the same number of losses as the second-place team, in this case in the favor of the Dodgers (over the Reds) and Expos (over the Cardinals). Likewise, during the strike-shortened 1972 season, the AL East was won by the Tigers, who had one more win and the same number of losses as the Red Sox.
The Marlins’ entire traveling party is currently self-quarantining in a Philadelphia hotel. Those who tested positive must remain there and self-quarantine for 14 days, according to MLB’s 2020 Operations Manual. The Miami Herald’s Jordan McPherson and Barry Jackson have reported that Miami-Dade mayor Carlos Gimenez said on Tuesday that everyone in the traveling party — including those who tested negative — would additionally have to self-quarantine for 14 days upon returning to Florida. The final say on that rests with governor Ron DeSantis, who had previously excepted sports teams traveling to and from Florida with regards to the quarantine, but may need to revisit that exemption in light of the Marlins’ exposure. DeSantis’ bravado and insistence upon reopening the state in late May has played a major part in Florida’s failure to contain the spread of COVID-19. The state’s total case count surpassed that of New York earlier this week and is second in the U.S. behind California.
The volume and severity of the Marlins’ outbreak and its impact upon the infected individuals should not be ignored. But leaving aside for a moment the issue of their quarantining and compliance with league rules and local regulations, MLB’s new course is at least a significant improvement upon the plan Manfred put forth on Monday, which Oxford College of Emory University epidemiologist Zachary Binney called “absolutely insane” and “the literal stupidest possible plan” given the possibility of players testing negative but incubating the virus. Binney found the new timeline more favorable but not without concerns:
https://twitter.com/zbinney_NFLinj/status/1288176858320830465
On the news that thus far no Phillies players have tested positive in connection to their exposure to the Marlins, he wrote, “It’s unconditionally good news that no one is sick yet!“ while adding, “Infections could’ve been transmitted from Marlins any time from Fri-Sun. Meaning Phillies players could test positive as early as Monday (when these tests were done), but also easily not until Thursday or Friday.”
For the Marlins and Phillies, it could be a long several days as they wait to be clear of further infections and return to play. MLB, for its part, pointed out in its statement that of the 6,400 tests conducted since last Friday, no player on any of the other 29 teams tested positive. As we’ve seen over the past couple of days, however, it only takes a few positive tests from a single team to send the entire season into chaos.
Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.
Is the self-righteous tone really necessary?
I didn’t catch too much of a self-righteous tone. Jay reported an epidemiologist-righteous comment but that’s because the epidemiologist had been proven to be right. Too many facebook certified epidemiologists out there these days.
There is no self-righteous tone here. There may be a question of whether MLB and the Marlins put the interest of their business ahead of the health of their employees and families or whether or not they are dealing with the fallout well. That is all appropriate.
Nobody wants this experiment to fail, least of all people whose lives depend on reporting sports. Jay knows better than any of us that if there is no baseball till next February’s spring training, there is a good chance that this web site folds and there si a good chance he is out of a job. THT hasn’t published anything in 4 months and Fangraphs home page most prominently displayed graph is a subscription drive. They need baseball more than you and I do.
Jay Jaffe lives in an area where 40,000 people died in a little more than a month. If I’m heading down to the trenches in 1916, It would serve me well to listen to the guy who’s been there.
Jay didn’t say Florida was dangerous–THE ENTIRE WASHINGTON NATIONALS TEAM DID
Were the Nationals planning on forfeiting those games if MLB did not cancel them?
I doubt they came to a decision about what they would do if it came down to an ultimatum to play or forfeit.
If only Ron DeSantis had virtue signaled harder and louder and been far more left wing. Then we could have forgiven him for the coronavirus deaths in his state as we do Cuomo and Newsom. I’m glad we’re making up for it by virtue signaling here though. That will help.
Is there a disconnect between the return to action criteria for players who test positive on the road (14 day quarantine) and players who test positive in other circumstances? I’m thinking of media suggestions that Juan Soto can return after 2 negative tests, and maybe 72 hours symptom free. Anyhow, I don’t really understand why Soto isn’t required to quarantine for 14 days after his last positive test on July 23. Hoping someone who understands can explain…
I think the quarantine is based on local or state rules. In Soto’s case, he did have to self-quarantine for 14 days after coming into contact with someone who tested positive (based on DC rules). This was before he himself tested positive. I believe that MLB’s only criteria is that you need back-to-back negative tests before returning to action.
BTW, on Twitter, Bob Nightengale reported that Soto was getting frustrated because he had plenty of negative results but not two in a row. Now he does have two in a row, but hard to believe that means much…
Thanks. This quote, ” Those who tested positive must remain there and self-quarantine for 14 days, according to MLB’s 2020 Operations Manual…” makes it sound like the 14 days is mlb-mandated, but maybe mlb just says, “follow local rules,” and that’s where this comes from.
And yea, how much confidence can you really have in a test that is ping ponging between positive and negative results? False positive/negative rates are obviously really important in all of this.
I don’t think that quote is correct. I looked through the document and don’t see that anywhere. Instead, it says that each team must put together a plan for dealing with players who test positive or display symptoms. Of course, we all have to comply with whatever the local/state rules are and I assume those would supersede any team action plans.
https://www.scribd.com/document/466744205/2020-MLB-Operations-Manual#fullscreen=1
I think MLB has the final say on reinstating Soto. But yeah, they should definitely wait if his tests have gone negative-positive-negative-positive-negative-negative or something like that. Just WAY too much uncertainty.
Not much has changed regarding Soto. He was cleared to come back yesterday, but the city hasn’t approved it yet. I’d imagine he is back for their double header Saturday.
Dear MLB Players,
During the pandemic, please refrain from letting your little head do the thinking for your big head.
Signed,
Everyone who cares about baseball
Did the Marlins have a massive orgy? Did I miss something?
Strip club in ATL
“Did the Marlins have a massive orgy? Did I miss something?”
Those pileups at home plate are REALLY getting out of hand…
MLB better get its plans on this straight because this is going to happen to another 15-20 teams before this is all over, and may even happen to the Phillies and Marlins again later in the season.
That this happened is a natural consequence of trying to do anything in person in 2020 and anyone who didn’t think it was deluding themselves.
I mean, they said they were going to be testing people all the time. That’s important. They also need to be really clear about what happens when there are positive tests.
If it happens to this many teams, I wonder if they’ll throw in the towel or just power through? I kind of think they will try to push through unless someone dies. It’s going to get messy. Though, I could see a case where governments force MLB to shut it down. All it would really take is for the Governors of California and New York to forbid play and over a quarter of the teams are out.
They don’t like to admit that they failed, even if it is beyond their control. They are going to power through unless public opinion turns against them so far they have no choice or some governors prohibit baseball in their states, either directly or with travel bans that make it impossible for teams to play there. deSantis never would do that, but Cuomo, Pritzker, and Newsom might. I wouldn’t even rule out Abbott lately. That would be 11 teams including the Yankees, Dodgers, Astros, and Cubs. Those four guys could pretty much end MLB’s season if they decided too.
Cuomo has already suggested everyone play all their games in NY, so I don’t think he’s gonna shut anything down any time soon.
If Newsome backs out, that’s five teams. Cuomo adds three more (with Buffalo). I don‘t think they keep playing with 8 homeless teams.
Things in NY are pretty calm. Like CC AFC says, it’s more likely they just all play in New York State / New England than it is he kicks them out early.
But California is, if things keep going the way they have, about 3 weeks away from taking more drastic action. It all depends on adherence to distancing and masks, which might actually happen in California, although it’s not by any means guaranteed.
You said this last time about the 15-20 teams and I disagreed then, and I disagree now. First, we are already 1/15th approximately of the way through the season. Zero other players in the MLB have it according to the last test. Zero. I do think other teams will have this happen, but it will be the amount you can count on one hand. The only way something like that changes would be if teams are hanging out outside of the field as well, which admittedly is possible. I’d imagine this is a wake up call however, and teams are going to stay to their own as much as possible.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I believe the first Marlins players who tested positive received results Sunday from tests that would have been performed Saturday. That means they were likely shedding enough virus to be contagious Friday and Saturday; the median incubation period (infection to symptoms) for SARS-CoV-19 is 5 days. Today is Wednesday; the fact that no Phillies got a positive result by today (for tests that would have been taken at latest yesterday, 3-4 days after possible exposure) doesn’t tell us at all definitively that no Phillies “have it”. (With 8 more positive tests Monday and 4 more Tuesday from players who could have been on the field Sunday as well, that just pushes the window out further.)
Also note that yesterday it was reported that a Phillies visiting clubhouse attendant tested positive and went into quarantine on Monday – but we have no idea how many other members of the organization he may have exposed between infection and quarantine. I don’t think there’s anything in the MLB Operating Manual for this season that directs teams to isolate staff in the visiting clubhouse from the rest of the staff and players.
If by this time next week no one in the Phillies organization has tested positive, then that will be an indication that it is possible that multiple players on one team can be infected without transmitting Covid to players on the other team through normal interaction during a game. Not that “baseball players can’t spread Covid during a game”, just that it’s possible that they won’t. Which is still a good thing, but certainly not a reason to think that it’ll never happen.
I mean obviously I am not a disease expert. It does seem like common sense that spreading a disease during a baseball game seems highly unlikely. Even if we see Phillies players who have it I’d venture it was more likely that they were hanging out outside of the field (or talking pregame) then actually getting it from the field. It just doesn’t seem likely.
Not unlikely that we’ll see a chain running from the Marlins to the visiting clubhouse staff (a visiting clubhouse attendant was reported to have tested positive over the weekend as Jay notes) to the home clubhouse staff (a home clubhouse attendant was reported to have gotten a positive test result today; there’s apparently no requirement for staff that is in contact with members of the visiting team to be isolated from staff that is in contact with the home team) to the Phillies team members.
So even if the likelihood of direct transmission between members of opposing teams on the field is low, there’s still a clear path for spread between teams – just one that takes a couple of extra links.
It’s not that hard to see how it happens. All it takes is community spread to reach NYC levels in April (~20% of the population) in any place these guys live and it will reach into the team, and it could very well reach into the team at levels well below that. And once it gets into the team, it will probably spread there, because the players aren’t in bubbles. It’s not that hard to see how one of them gets infected and spreads it to the rest of them.
I do agree it seems less likely that it will spread during a baseball game, but we don’t really know the answer to that one.
The question, of course, is when that will happen. MLB made a pretty strong bet that it won’t happen before the end of September. We’re already getting close to that level of transmission in Miami (and it hit the Marlins) and it’s worth monitoring what’s going on in Houston, Phoenix, and Dallas. And that’s before college students start returning to college campuses and at least some places decide to put kids back in school. I would say that 2/3rds of the most populous cities/counties in the US are going to have major surges before the end of September–on the level of what we’re already seeing Miami–and it’s going to be awful.
So, I’m seeing that Bob Nightengale is reporting that at least one Marlin was out partying in Atlanta in their series just before the season. MLB needs to investigate this and, if it’s true, come down with Thor’s hammer on this guy. Suspend him for the season. Anyone showing this level of disregard for his teammates and for the league has no business playing.
I feel you, and I’m sure his teammates would agree, but isn’t this a symptom of MLB and the MLBPA having spent 90% of their time deciding how much money they’d make and 1-10% on health/logistical protocols and enforcement? You can’t control everything, but you can *plan* for a lot…and it’s not at all clear that MLB truly planned beyond, “let’s just start and see how it goes”
Oh yeah – I’m mostly in agreement here. They missed a lot in their planning. And, if the Phillies get sick, MLB should get a lot of the blame. But, no amount of planning can keep a player from acting irresponsibly. The league could set a curfew, but even that would only be of limited value. I think the best deterrent is harsh punishment for grossly irresponsible behavior.
Though, to your point, if they had outlined punishments as part of the plan, this might not have happened.
Unless the union agreed to some CBA modification/safety plan governing what players do on their own time, I doubt MLB has that power. Nor should they. It’s one thing for us to say it’s irresponsible for a player to be out partying (it absolutely is), but I sure wouldn’t want my employer policing what I do in my time off. Not because I’m hiding anything, I just don’t want to live in a world where that’s normal. Of course, if the union agreed to it, they can’t complain.
To me, this line of reporting looks like MLB trying to shift the public blame here from their protocol to what a player supposedly did. Which makes me think that a) a protocol that doesn’t allow for the reality of what players will do is also flawed, and b) that’s just low of them to throw a player under the bus like that.
The NFL is incorporating those types of personal conduct rules to deal with the virus. There are a number of them that govern where players can go in their free time. If the MLB and PA didn’t do that, they’re even bigger idiots than I thought.
They may have, in which case I withdraw my first paragraph. Either way, I’m more annoyed by the blame-shifting by MLB here. Sure, your protocol is flawless, it’s those darn irresponsible players causing all the problems.
In theory, they could suspend players under the general conduct code of the CBA:
“Players may be disciplined for just cause for conduct that is materially detrimental or materially prejudicial to the best interests of Baseball including, but not limited to, engaging in conduct in violation of federal, state or local law.”
Doubt they would do that though since it would be virtually impossible to prove that player was responsible for the outbreak.
I know it’s not by the MLB but player’s contracts have a tone of stuff that regulates what they can and can’t do in their free time, so it’s not like it’s completely unheard of.
I disagree. Player contracts often already contain clauses banning risky behavior. There’s certainly precedent for this. Why would the players union oppose this during this time? They want to play games more than anyone and, if individual players act irresponsibility, there will not be many games. If the Phillies players get sick, that’s on the league, and if the clubhouse rules allowed for spread, that’s on the league, but, far and away, the best prevention method is to do all possible to keep the disease from getting into the clubhouse. Nothing short of a bubble can reduce this risk to zero, but the risk can and should be reduced. Punishing irresponsible behavior aids greatly in this.
From Nightengale USA Today 7/29:
Major League Baseball has opened an investigation involving the Miami Marlins’ coronavirus outbreak, trying to determine the cause of 16 players and two coaches testing positive and forcing the shutdown of their season for a week, a high-ranking person with direct knowledge of the investigation told USA TODAY Sports
MLB has yet to determine whether the Marlins players will be paid for the postponed games if they are unable to play every game in the 60-game season, but will pay the Philadelphia Phillies, New York Yankees and Washington Nationals for games missed because of the Marlins’ outbreak. The Yankees and Phillies had their two-game series cancelled for precautionary reasons because the Marlins were in Philadelphia using the visiting clubhouse. The Nats’ weekend series in Miami was cancelled with the Marlins being isolated until at least Monday.
The March 26 agreement states that players will receive prorated pay only for the number of games their teams play, but MLB made an exception for the Nats, Phillies and Yankees since they weren’t responsible for the postponed games.
I like it- little curbs bad behavior better than social pressure. And keeping guys from getting paid will absolutely cause social pressure.
Given that 5 teams’ schedules were affected by this one outbreak, it is clear that MLB is really walking on a knife’s edge here… What if two, three, four, etc. teams are simultaneously or near-simultaneously going through a situation like this? At best it seems the season would have to pause entirely for a couple weeks, at worst it’s curtains for everyone this year. It’s already questionable health and safety-wise for MLB to be conducting the season the way it is (i.e. no bubble), but we really aren’t far away from a season being logistically impossible as well. As much as I love baseball, it seems more and more like the only moral (and, of secondary, and minimal, importance, competitively fair) solution here is to call off the season now before we see deaths or more long-term maladies as a result of this.
It is encouraging that other teams have basically been case free however, at the very least. A couple days ago this seemed like a season-ending event, and now that seems highly unlikely. Playing baseball itself I would imagine is extremely low risk. You are outdoors, and you are rarely close to other people. The risk is in the clubhouse, and the dugout, and the locker room etc. Heard reports that the Marlins went out to a strip club in Atlanta, which obviously is a higher risk situation then playing a game outside. The MLB’s initial plan was wild, but to me this is actually encouraging that nobody else is getting it. They should of made strict rules regarding player conduct off the field as well, but at least it being isolated to one team is encouraging. I’d venture it happens to other teams as well, at some point. Maybe a playoff team will all go down right before the postseason, who knows. But I for one am at least enjoying watching baseball.
As I said above, I think it’s too soon to be encouraged. This time next week, maybe.
And seemingly everyone but MLB knew this. People on this very site pointed it out. The two other major sports (NBA and NHL) knew this and created bubbles (that have actually worked).
Banning high fives and wearing masks on first is great. But the plan really didnt do anything to address the actual risks and, not surprisingly, they had an outbreak pretty much instantly. MLB’s looks like an absolute clown show in all this..
Formula 1 – no positive tests so far (4 weeks)
NBA – 2 positive tests since entering the bubble (none in the past week)
NHL – 2 positive tests since entering the bubble (none in the past two weeks)
Premier League – 1 positive test this month (none in the past week)
MLB – at least 20 positives in the first week.
How did MLB screw this up so badly?
MLB is not playing in a bubble.
It would have been harder to do in MLB, but it could have been done.
The MLBPA was against the bubble from the start.
That’s their right and it’s their members that will bear the brunt of this position. It would have been tough to be in a bubble for three months, but it would have greatly increased the chances of getting this in without a lot of people getting sick.
All Lives Matter Jay. Also, Marxism is bad and please do some research on the virus that is not coming from mainstream media, Facebook or Google. Many people are seeing right through this, hence the censorship push.
What fresh hell is this