BUFFALO BLUE JAYS
Blue Jays to play in Buffalo minor league park amid pandemic
TORONTO(AP) » The displaced Toronto Blue Jays will play in a minor league park in Buffalo, New York, this year after being turned down by the Canadian government and blocked to play in Pittsburgh by the state of Pennsylvania.
The Blue Jays will play “home games” at Sahlen Field in Buffalo, home of the club’s Triple-A affiliate Buffalo Bisons. General manager Ross Atkins had previously said that if team could not find a major league park, Buffalo would be the most likely site for home games.
The team sought a major league stadium after the Canadian government declined to allow them to play in Toronto but was unsuccessful. Pennsylvania health officials then rejected a deal to play in Pittsburgh because of rising COVID-19 cases there.
The team also held talks with the Baltimore Orioles about Camden Yards, but the Blue Jays didn’t want to wait to see if Maryland officials would say no with 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 infrastructure modifications at Sahlen Field to meet Major League Baseball standards and COVID-19 safety requirements.
The Blue Jays’ first game in Buffalo will be either 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, Florida, but that is among the states that are virus hot spots.
Health officials in Canada and Pennsylvania, however, were worried about frequent travel throughout the U. S., one of the countries hit hardest by the pandemic.
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.
Slugger Vladimir Guerrero Jr. expects the Buffalo’s park to favor pitchers because it is a larger field than the Rogers Centre in Toronto.
“It’s going to be different because of the way it is in Toronto compared to Buffalo,” Guerrero said through a translator. “There are no fans anyway. We’re just going to go play baseball.”
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 needs to be expanded so that 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.
The team has also reached out to the Buffalo Sabres about using some of its facilities.