#Marlins’ coronavirus outbreak threatens MLB season: Sherman

MLB left its cocoon and learned it may not be able to play a season.

Eleven of the 33 players in the Marlins traveling party, plus two coaches, tested positive for COVID-19 while the team was in Philadelphia for the first weekend of the regular season, reiterating how contagious the virus is and how quickly a club could be susceptible to wide outbreak.

MLB’s immediate action was to keep the Marlins traveling party in Philadelphia and postpone Monday night’s home opener against the Orioles in Miami, which is currently a COVID-19 epicenter. In addition, the Yankees game at Philadelphia was postponed, as Phillie personnel who came into contact with the Marlins over the weekend await COVID-19 test results and the visiting clubhouse that was used by the Marlins for three games is sanitized.

But those are merely threads of where this could lead.

MLB was having its now standard 30-owner conference call on Monday afternoon. But it was not standard now. The league has to decide if protocols need amending on when to cancel games if player(s) test positive. Four Marlin players had tested positive over the weekend, with three learning about it Saturday night. Yet the Miami-Philadelphia game was still played Sunday. Then a new batch of results came Monday morning that showed the wider contagion.

The larger question now is not about Monday’s games. But all games. Is this a Rudy Gobert moment for MLB where the league goes from monitoring to shutting down in a blink?

“I would say when you get numbers like this, particularly from a Florida MLB team, you start to ask yourself about the risks of continuing your business on a day-to-day basis,” Dr. Joseph Kim, an infectious disease consultant at ID Care in New Jersey, said.

In mid-May Dr. Kim voiced optimism that MLB could pull off its plan. However, in an interview with The Post on Monday, Kim noted how much had changed in the past two-and-a-half months — notably, the reduction of cases in the tri-State area while Florida, Arizona and Texas, among other areas, had spiked. He said, “This is a little bit different than finding one or two positives. This is finding several positives. This kind of occurrence definitely calls into question the well-being of players and staff. If the players are likely not going to get really sick, the older coaches could get sick.”

MLB had produced optimistic test numbers going into the weekend. That predated the regular season and mass travel necessitating flights, bus rides and hotel stays. That the first group of Marlin players tested positive from tests administered Friday suggests that they were not infected in Philadelphia, but brought the virus with them, exposing any airport or hotel staff, etc. to the virus, in addition to Phillies personnel.

That the virus incubates for several days and often carriers are asymptomatic means there is no way to know in the moment if any person is virus-free, despite MLB’s attempt with testing of on-field personnel every other day to be as current as possible.

MLB’s initial plan was to try to play this season in a bubble in either Arizona, or Arizona and Florida, or those two states plus Texas. But players did not want that level of restriction, and many teams did not want to leave their comfort/equipment and give up on eventually having some paying fans return. Thus, as opposed to what the NBA and NHL will try with a bubble, MLB decided to try to play in home parks. Also, by the time even the second spring training had begun, Arizona, Florida and Texas were among the states dealing with the most substantial coronavirus cases. In fact, MLB is trying to play when case numbers in the country are significantly higher than when the sport closed down in March.

The degree of difficulty in traveling and staying free of the virus was emphasized when the Canadian government ruled that the Blue Jays would be the one team not to play games in their usual Toronto home. The government was largely afraid of teams coming from hot spots like Miami into the country to play in Toronto. Pennsylvania officials made the same decision about not letting the Blue Jays use Pittsburgh as a home base. Yet here was Philadelphia becoming the epicenter of MLB’s first in-season crisis nevertheless.

MLB was anticipating the potential for teams suffering multiple positive results. It is why each club has a 60-man pool from which to pick players, with those not on the active roster either working out at a satellite facility or comprising a three-man taxi squad when teams are on the road. Still, there is theory and reality. Now, there is the reality of the Marlins, who also have been without outfielders Lewis Brinson and Matt Joyce, both sidelined for weeks without explanation (teams can only announce players are COVID-19-positive or have symptoms of COVID-19 with the player’s permission).

Clearly, if Miami is forced to play by going deep into its satellite team, it will severely compromise its competitiveness and further strike at the legitimacy of a season already under attack, mainly for its 60-game length.

But it is not like MLB can just park the Marlins and play on, when that will impact the schedule of so many other clubs. Also, how long are the Phillies going to be asked to quarantine without a game to assure they have a virus-free roster?

These questions became more pertinent after just one weekend of regular season play. Raising the biggest question of all: Can MLB play a season in this environment?

— Additional reporting by Ken Davidoff.