With the Yankees already in Philadelphia last night and the Phillies not able to travel today I think it's more likely they'll play 3 games in 2 days and make another one up if need be. Or they could just go ahead with it tomorrow, if the Phillies pass their tests.
If they really are commited to trying to play out the season, the reality probably is that some teams will only play 56 or 58 games.
One thing that seems to be crossing political parties, businesses, state lines, etc... is uniform logic. Don't look for logic, it's probably not there.
Looks like the Orioles and Marlins are both going back to Baltimore with the hope of playing Wednesday.
If you are determined to play and determined to finish the season on time I think you just suck it up and use winning percentage. It's not fair but the schedule isn't fair anyway. And it could cut either way. We already have new rules about rainouts/official games. Heck, why not 7-inning games?
Have the Marlins been cleared to travel, or, pending clearance?
I gather the residents of the fancy Rittenhouse condo/hotel wasn't too thrilled about this either.
This does make one wonder if they should have just designed a pod system in safer areas of the country. 3 pods with 10 teams each. Or 5 pods with 6 teams each (then rotate the pods every few weeks). It would be crazy baseball, but the lack of a bubble is what is killing the current system.
I hope the season is cancelled. The Phillies' start against a COVID decimated team doesn' t give much hope for anything positive to come out of this joike of a season.
I don’t really care who wins this season. It’s was just such a joy to have the game on television. When we had our early poll, my thought was that they wouldn’t finish the season. I didn’t think the infection rate would be so bad this summer. Unlike the flu, this virus is not seasonal. Most people made the mistake of thinking as the economy opened up, the risk was going down, which turned out not to be true. A lot of people, particularly those who didn’t really experience it badly in the first place acted as if the risk had gone away. (Going to leave the man in the White House out for sake of discussion, though he clearly exacerbated the problem.)
Obviously, MLB is going to try to power this through, at least for the week. I think they need to give everybody the rapid test. I saw on the machine today on television. The doctor said the White House uses it and MLB. Apparently they don’t. He said the machine costs about $250.00,he wasn’t allowed to name the manufacturer. The machine can run 50 test tubes each containing an individual swab a day, with a thirty minute turnaround. This is peanuts to MLB.
It was certainly nice while it lasted. Thanks to the piped-in crowd noise, on radio it almost sounded normal. And given the relative success of MLS in keeping the virus at bay, I found myself thinking that an outdoor sport that's inherently played at a distance for most players could be at least as successful, and that after all of the anguish and ill will that preceded it, surely enough thought, effort, and enforcement would accompany even the illusion of a season, given the stakes involved.
Today it all feels dejecting and futile, and I find myself thinking that it would have been better to lose the season than to get a taste only to have the reality crash the party.
I can't help but think that the union and owners spent the downtime fighting about money moreso than coming up with a viable plan. I don't know how true that actually is.
Maybe they will still be playing when I get back to Boston and can watch a Phillies game that is not blacked out. My hotel does not have the games.
The epidemiologists are certainly not impressed.
(If anyone wants a 30-day Athletic pass, DM me.)
“I think that by any definition, this is an outbreak on their team,” said Dr. John Swartzburg, a clinical professor emeritus at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, Division of Infectious Disease. “And an outbreak on a team means that the team needs to close down.”
“Earlier, in (summer camp), if you didn’t have test results, you didn’t practice,” said Dr. Zachary Binney, an epidemiologist at Emory University’s Oxford College. “So to have four positive results and then play a game just seems totally unaligned with that.”
_Both Swartzberg and Binney said that if they were advising Major League Baseball, they would recommend hitting the pause button on the Marlins’ season, most likely for the next two weeks. _
Added Binney on Monday, after the additional positive tests were announced, “I’ve been saying for weeks that 3-4 cases in a few days should be enough to shut down a team. This is exactly why. Three to four cases is unlikely to stay 3-4 cases. Playing the game [Sunday] was stupid and reckless…. The Phillies sent their clubhouse attendants into a hot zone.”
It seems clear that the Marlins disregarded numerous regulations in the MLB manual and have as a result seriously impacted several other teams and perhaps jeopardized the entire baseball season.
Miami should be severely penalized for their careless and flippant behavior.
With the phillies continued lack of success against them, I vote for complete contraction and removal from the league. 
I reluctantly admit that I now believe that Baseball and probably Football should be cancelled. It sucks, but honestly it is the only reasonable action at this point, not to say it is what will happen.
I talked with one of my best friends yesterday, a former college football player at Florida State and Georgia Tech, now 36 years old but still in great physical shape. He tested positive for covid-19 11 days ago when he nearly passed out while working out. He tells me that he is fine, but he can't believe just how bad and hard this was on him, he described as the worst 11 days of his life, no energy, persistent, heavy cough and the fear that he has permanently damaged his lungs. His wife suffers from Lupus and he has 2 tween daughters, trust me he is much more afraid of what could happen to them than any fears he has for himself. This is a guy probably in the 90th percentile of physical condition, not the same as a current athlete, but he is not in a high risk category and he tells me that he was in bad, bad shape a week ago fearing for his life and the lives of his family. This is not a guy who makes those statements out of paranoia, but really honest evaluation of the situation.
The simple fact is that if they continue to play sports eventually players are going to die. Even if you give them credit for physical conditioning, there will be 100s if not 1000 cases of Covid-19 among the players of Baseball, Football, College sports, etc. Just look at the Marlins, presumably 0 guys were positive during camp and in one incident it spread to at least 11 players and 2 coaches, and that is nothing to what could have happened to the Philies and Yankees if it had been caught 1 day later. If we keep getting cases in these numbers than eventually some athlete is going to succumb to the effects. It is simply irresponsible.
I miss sports, I really miss them, but I dont want my leisure time activity of following a sport to start costing people their lives. These guys work WAY to hard to get to this level of professional sports to just have them be executed because we want to watch. Basically, at the moment, we are watching gladiatorial combat, it just takes a little longer for the gladiator to die and it is a great deal more lingering and horrible way to do it.
I hope we end this. I want to say I refuse to follow sports until they can be played safely, but I doubt I would honor that pledge, so I will simply say I hope the choice is taken away from me.
This, to me, is one of the problems. Even if MLB and all teams follow all of their precautions, there's no guarantees.
The plan is still for the Phillies to play their regularly scheduled game at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday night. The Phillies will travel to New York by bus on Wednesday.
Baseball's COVID-19 protocol calls for players to be tested every other day. Phillies players will be tested again Tuesday. They will be tested in their cars at the ballpark then drive home.
The problem here is that the tests aren't even close to 100% accurate, especially not the rapid ones. So if you have 2-3 players who tested false negative, and then get on the bus and infect the rest of the team, you have an issue. And, that's with following all of the MLB protocols.
Which is not to say they shouldn't play. But, it is to say that MLB/NFL plans of playing w/o being in a bubble carry risk, and outbreaks should be expected.
The idea you could have sports with players embedded in the general population was and is crazy.
I mean at least the NBA and NHL have a chance, though knuckleheads like Lou Williams are putting people at risk.
How are you going to police 30+ MLB players per team plus staff and 46+ NFL players plus staff and ensure they all avoid any contact while living in the outside world, especially in states like Florida and Texas. And once it gets into the clubhouse and practice field or games all bets are off.
I think a lot of wishful thinking is going on.
So MLB had no problem allowing the Phillies-Marlins games this past weekend after several Marlins had already tested positive, but now they don't allow games after the Phillies tests are negative. Given, I guess, some tests are not back yet. Still, it is hard to imagine MLB doing a worse job handling all this.
Clearly, MLB has to get better, or they may as well just close up and go home now. Frankly, it is looking more and more like this whole season is about to fall apart.
Clearly, they must get tests that can give results very quickly. The current turn around time is not good enough to allow a safe season to be played.
