YOUNG BLUE JAYS ROLL WITH THE PUNCHES
COVID-19 cases cancel Phillies series in the latest test for road warriors
They’re a homeless team and will continue to be one through the first quarter of the abbreviated and disrupted 2020 Major League Baseball season.
And now the Toronto Blue Jays are having troubles finding opponents to play as the coronavirus crisis continues to make a mess of a potentially ill-designed campaign that is just over a week old.
The latest setback came on Thursday afternoon when the displaced franchise learned players won’t be travelling to Philadelphia for a three-game weekend set because two Phillies employees have tested positive for COVID -19.
Nothing should surprise us anymore about baseball at large, or about a Jays team that was booted out of its home stadium by the Canadian government, rejected by state governments in a bid to share at least two big league stadiums, and forced to start the treacherous 60-game schedule with a 16-game road trip. Now this.
“This has been a pretty difficult year for everyone,” Jays reliever Jordan Romano said during a Zoom call before Thursday’s Jays-nationals game in Washington, D.C., a contest in which the Jays were once again listed as the home nine.
“In this clubhouse, we’ve got a lot of really focused guys, and we’re just trying to focus on what we can control and not let the outside distractions get in the way of us performing.”
It’s all been a little much for the Jays, who haven’t taken any direct hits from the coronavirus since the season began last week, but are among the growing number of teams absorbing shrapnel.
In fact, this weekend’s series is pretty much the Jays’ season in a nutshell, now that the schedule incredibly has been changed five times.
Originally slated to be played at the Rogers Centre, the series was subsequently shifted to Buffalo.
When it was determined that Sahlen Field wouldn’t be ready in time for this weekend, however, MLB once again got the eraser out and asked the Phillies to play as the visiting team in Citizens Bank Park to the “host” Jays.
But the Phillies were playing the Miami Marlins last weekend.
Thursday arrived with news that a Phillies coach and clubhouse attendant had tested positive for the virus and the game was scrapped completely.
So now what? (A question that is cropping up far too regularly in a season that is just a week old.)
All Jays manager Charlie Montoyo could do was laugh at the latest punch to the gut his team has endured over the past two weeks.
“It hasn’t been easy, but the players have been handling it great,” Montoyo said during a Zoom conference call before Thursday’s game.
For now, the Jays plan to remain in D.C. through the weekend as they await their next series starting on Tuesday in Atlanta.
And through it all, the Marlins COVID -19 outbreak continues to disrupt play and possibly has the season teetering on the edge. With 18 players and personnel testing positive, no less than six teams in the Jays’ division have been touched by the Marlins outbreak.