Judge ‘not a fan’ of MLB’s playoff bubble
NEW YORK — Aaron Boone left his house with two suitcases, plenty of underwear and hoping not to be back for at least six weeks. The Yankees manager’s young family have kids involved in school and other activities. It would have been too much to uproot them and put them in the MLB quarantine for seven days to enter into the playoff bubble for however long the Yankees last.
“We signed up for this and my family is very supportive and and you know, with school back in and things going on in their worlds, being very busy right now too,” Boone said. “So we’ll try and make the most of Facetime and hopefully, I’ll come home with a prize.”
The Yankees leave for a sevengame road trip to Boston and Buffalo before returning to the Bronx for three games against the Marlins to end the regular season.
“We’ll check into a hotel here in NewYork and essentially continue a bubble of sorts,” Boone said. “So we’ll get back from Buffalo and go right to the hotel.”
And then they will be in a bubble for the rest of the playoffs to try and prevent the coronavirus outbreaks that caused havoc with the regular-season schedule. Families have the option of coming into the bubble with the players, but many found that seven days of quarantine in a hotel before going into a bubble with kids is not really a workable option.
The Yankees understood that this 2020 season would be very different as the country continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed over 197,000 Americans in the the past eight months. They have been in something resembling a bubble all year with no fans in the ballparks, all media done through video conference calls and every other day testing for COVID-19.
But not everyone is happy with the plans of having the playoffs in a bubble. The wild card rounds will be played at the home site of the team with the higher seed, but after that the games will be played at neutral sites. The Yankees, if the season ended now, would be headed to a three-game wild card series in Minneapolis, followed by a potential American League Division Series and Championship Series at Petco Park in San Diego.
The World Series will be held at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.
Gleyber’s back: After missing three straight games with a tight quad, Gleyber Torres was back in the Yankees lineup on Thursday. The shortstop had missed 13 games with a strained quad and hamstring last month. Boone is trying to get his team to the postseason healthy.
“We’ll just make sure he’s moving well, but I feel good about taking the couple extra days to just be cautious here,” Boone said. “Obviously we know how important he is to our team.”
In his previous five games, Torres was 7-for-14 with four extrabase hits and seven RBIs.