Buffalo will be Blue Jays’ home this year
The displaced Toronto Blue Jays will play their homes games in the minor league ballpark in Buffalo this year after being turned down by the Canadian government and then blocked from playing in Pittsburgh by the state of Pennsylvania.
The Blue Jays will play at Sahlen Field in Buffalo, home of the club’s Triple-A affiliate Buffalo Bisons. General Manager Ross Atkins previously said if the team could not find a major league park, Buffalo would be the most likely site for home games. It takes about two hours to drive between Buffalo and Toronto.
The Blue Jays looked for a major league stadium after the Canadian government declined to allow them to play in Toronto but was unsuccessful in securing a site. Pennsylvania health officials then nixed a deal to play in Pittsburgh with COVID-19 cases on the rise there.
The team also held talks with the Baltimore Orioles about Oriole Park at Camden Yards, but the Blue Jays didn’t want to wait to see if Maryland officials would say no with the season starting Friday.
“Baltimore never got to a situation to where we were denied,” Blue Jays President Mark Shapiro said Friday. “At some point continuing to explore and look at an option like Baltimore was not going to be a risk we could take. That risk of being turned down certainly existed. And so
we obviously had to make a decision knowing we had a very good alternative, albeit not a major league one. but one we felt could get close to a major league one.”
Toronto opens the season at Tampa Bay on Friday. The team said the first scheduled home series, against the Washington Nationals on July 29 and 30, will take place on the road to accommodate necessary infrastructure modifications at Sahlen Field to meet Major League Baseball playing standards and COVID-19 safety requirements.
The Blue Jays’ first game in Buffalo will be either on July 31 against the Philadelphia Phillies or Aug. 11 against the Miami Marlins.
The team had also considered playing home games at its training facility in Dunedin, Fla., but Florida has been a virus hot spot.
Canada has flattened the pandemic curve, but health officials in Canada and Pennsylvania were worried about frequent travel throughout the U.S., one of the countries hit hardest by the coronavirus.
Atkins had said this week that his team had more than five contingency plans for a home stadium and was in talks with other teams.
Blue Jays players had made it clear to the front office they wanted to play in a major league park. Outfielder Randal Grichuk Buffalo had described Buffalo as a “worst case.”
“This process has no doubt tested our team’s resilience, but our players and staff refuse to make excuses,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro said “substantial” new construction will be required to upgrade Sahlen Field. The locker rooms need to be expanded so social distancing can be practiced. The lights need be upgraded, as well. The team will be incurring the majority if not all of the costs, he said.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., urged baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred in a letter and call this week to pick Buffalo.
“I’ve always been a Bisons and Bills fan, so I guess now I’ll be a Blue Jays fan, at least this year,” Schumer said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It seemed so logical for the Blue Jays to go to Buffalo for geographic and market reasons. If they want to expand their market, it’s very good to be in western New York. It’s a good facility. It’s a Major League-caliber playing surface.”