- The St. Louis Cardinals have postponed their game against Milwaukee Friday after positive COVID-19 tests among the team.
- The Cardinals are the first team outside of the NL East to have positive tests during the season among the members of the traveling team.
- The Miami Marlins have 18 players who have tested positive for COVID-19
LAS VEGAS - The MLB season might be in serious jeopardy. Bad news came in the form of a tweet from Jeff Passan, as it often has over the course of this shortened MLB season.
Positive coronavirus tests with the St. Louis Cardinals have postponed their game against the Milwaukee Brewers, a source tells ESPN, confirming the @jonheyman report. Unclear how many, but to this point positives had been limited to teams in the East. Now in the Central, too.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) July 31, 2020
Most people are familiar by now with how the Miami Marlins became the epicenter of what appears to be a COVID-19 outbreak. More than 18 Marlins have tested positive for COVID-19, which is genuinely astonishing for a team that played MLB baseball games less than a week ago.
The team the Marlins played against, the Philadelphia Phillies, also have positive tests.
The Philadelphia Phillies have canceled workouts today after a coach and clubhouse attendant tested positive for coronavirus. Activities are shut down “until further notice,” according to the team.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) July 30, 2020
Now, a team that hadn’t had direct contact with the Marlins has developed an outbreak as well, which calls into question more than just MLB’s procedures, but the entire concept of playing a baseball season during a pandemic.
One thing to consider is the games that get postponed - what happens to them? There probably isn’t enough time to slap them on at the end of the season, especially with the expanded 16 team playoff format this year.
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How does that affect people that bet on the win totals of various teams? Have the sportsbooks already taken it into account? Will MLB end up delaying the playoffs so that teams can make up the games they missed?
These are all questions we simply do not have the answers to.
This is all to say nothing of the elephant in the room: Will the World Series even be played?
Given the conditions of the pandemic, it seems like many people look at the MLB and come to the conclusion that there is no way the World Series can be played.
While the odds favored playing a World Series only a few days ago, the situation looked fairly rosy at the time.
Remember, those odds were from before either the Phillies or the Cardinals had positive tests.
Right now, online sportsbook that hosted those odds is no longer offering them.
That can’t be a good sign.
Maxwell joined the USAOnlineSportsbooks team in 2019. He focuses on creating sports betting content that informs and educates. He focuses on the NBA, the NFL, College Football and Basketball, and whatever else comes across his desk.
