Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred remains confident the 2020 season can proceed despite the Miami Marlins' COVID-19 outbreak.
Thirteen members of the Marlins organization tested positive over the weekend. The Marlins played the Philadelphia Phillies on Sunday despite learning of the positive results before the game.
Two games scheduled for Monday - a contest in Philadelphia between the Phillies and the New York Yankees, and a tilt between the Marlins and the Baltimore Orioles in Miami - have been postponed as a result.
In a Monday interview with MLB Network's Tom Verducci, Manfred said he doesn't think the Marlins' positive tests are a death knell for the campaign.
"I don't put this in the nightmare category," Manfred said. "Obviously, we don't want any player to get exposed. It's not a positive thing, but I don't see it as a nightmare. We built the protocols to allow us to continue to play, that's why we have the expanded rosters, that's why we have the pool of additional players. We think we can keep people safe and continue to play."
He added: "We expected we were going to have positives at some point in time. I remain optimistic that the protocols are strong enough that it will allow us to continue to play - even through an outbreak like this - and complete our season."
What would force Manfred to pause a team's season? "A team losing a number of players that rendered it completely non-competitive"
— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) July 27, 2020
Manfred added that owners did not discuss the possibility of canceling the season during a conference call Monday.
The commissioner also defended MLB's decision to use teams' home ballparks during the pandemic instead of creating a localized bubble environment. The NBA, NHL, and MLS have all created bubbles, and each league has had relative success avoiding a coronavirus outbreak.
"I think the decision that we made with respect to the bubble was the right one," Manfred told Verducci. "We're different than other sports. We would have had to have multiple locations, probably, in order to have enough facilities to make it work - the numbers of people involved and the numbers of people to support the number of players was much, much larger in our sport.
"The duration would have been much longer, and the longer you go, the more people you have, the less likely it is that you can make the bubble work. I think the NBA and NHL have an advantage - smaller number of players, shorter period of time. I understand why they did what they did, but I'm just not sure it was workable for us."
Manfred confirmed that Tuesday's Marlins-Orioles contest has also been postponed; the Marlins remain in Philadelphia while the Orioles returned to Baltimore on Monday. The status of their game scheduled for Wednesday in Baltimore depends on the results of COVID-19 tests.
Manfred expects the Marlins and Phillies to receive their test results late Monday.
