MLB puts Marlins’ season on hold through Sunday
MIAMI — Major League Baseball suspended the Marlins’ season through Sunday, the Phillies will remain idled by the coronavirus pandemic until Friday and the rest of baseball forges ahead with trepidation.
‘‘There’s real fear, there’s real anxiety for me, for all my teammates,’’ Brewers slugger Ryan Braun said Tuesday. ‘‘I think we’ve found it very difficult to focus on baseball at all the last couple of days.’’
In the wake of a virus outbreak that infected half the Marlins’ team, Braun said players constantly are assessing whether they should keep playing. Infectious-disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said the season might be in jeopardy.
But MLB came up with a patchwork schedule for the rest of this week and said that among more than 6,400 tests conducted since Friday, there were no new positives involving on-field personnel from any team other than the Marlins.
In a statement, MLB said it wanted to allow the Marlins time to focus on providing care for their players and to plan for a resumption of play early next week. MLB also postponed the three remaining games of the Yankees-Phillies series.
The Marlins remained stranded in Philadelphia, where they played last weekend. The Yankees-Phillies games were postponed ‘‘out of an abundance of caution,’’ MLB said, although no Phillies players have tested positive.
The Marlins received positive test results for four more players, bringing their total to 15, a person familiar with the situation told the Associated Press. The person declined to be identified because the results had not been released.
Nine players on the 30-man roster, two taxi-squad players and two staff members had tested positive earlier.
The Marlins had been scheduled to play the Orioles in Baltimore on Wednesday and Thursday. Instead, the Yankees will visit the Orioles on those days.
The Marlins’ three home games this weekend against the Nationals also were postponed. Nationals players had voted against making the trip, manager Dave Martinez said.
‘‘We all decided that it was probably unsafe to go there,’’ Martinez said. ‘‘It had nothing to do with the Miami Marlins. It was all about Miami and the state of Florida, this pandemic. They didn’t feel safe.’’
The Marlins underwent another round of tests Tuesday as their outbreak raised new questions about MLB’s attempts to conduct a season.
‘‘This could put it in danger,’’ Fauci said on ABC’s ‘‘Good Morning America.’’ ‘‘I don’t believe they need to stop, but we just need to follow this and see what happens with other teams on a day-by-day basis.’’
His comments came before word of the Marlins’ latest test results.
‘‘Major League Baseball — the players, the owners, the managers — have put a lot of effort into getting together and putting protocols that we feel would work,’’ Fauci said. ‘‘It’s very unfortunate what happened with the [Marlins].’’