MLB commissioner Rob Manfred says protocol has worked ‘pretty well’ following Marlins COVID outbreak

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred says protocol has worked ‘pretty well’ following Marlins COVID outbreak.

It was bound to happen. Pretty much everyone knew a COVID-19 outbreak would take out an entire baseball team but we don’t think anyone thought it would happen so fast.

On Monday reports revealed that a whopping 14 people within the Miami Marlins organization was confirmed with coronavirus, thus their season opener and the subsequent game against the Baltimore Orioles has been postponed.

Many have called for the halt, or at least, the re-organization of the MLB season after this outbreak and now MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is speaking on the issue.

“Our first concern, obviously, is the health of the players and their families and making sure that we do everything possible to minimize the spread of the virus among our employees,” he said. “We’ve been fortunate so far we’ve done 10’s of thousands of tests and our positive rate has been .4 percent. So, we feel like the protocols have worked pretty well.”

Pretty well isn’t good enough when lives are at stake

That’s a great sentiment to have but “pretty well” isn’t the best way to describe how they are handling a potentially deadly virus.

We’re hoping that a new, stricter, plan is being created in the meantime.

“We’re doing some additional testing,” he said. “If the testing results are acceptable the Marlins will resume play in Baltimore on Wednesday, against the Orioles.”