Today’s St. Louis Cardinals/Milwaukee Brewers game–the season opener for the Brew Crew at Miller Park–was postponed due to two positive COVID-19 tests among Cardinals players.
The Cardinals were ordered to stay quarantined in their Milwaukee hotel today pending additional testing. The team had arrived in in Milwaukee Wednesday evening after playing the Minnesota Twins that day at Target Field, enjoying an off day on Thursday. Potentially we could see the entire Cardinals/Brewers weekend series canceled. Today’s game will be part of a traditional doubleheader on Sunday, August 2 at 1:10 p.m. Saturday’s game between the Brewers and the Cards will remain as scheduled for 6:10 p.m.
It was a late scratch: the Brewers were already running through their pregame warmups at Miller Park when the decision was made.
Surreal scene at Miller Park where the #Brewers are still going through warm-ups. pic.twitter.com/od5seirmFc
— Scott Grodsky (@ScottGrodsky) July 31, 2020
There may be some cascading effects from this in Minnesota as well: the Cleveland Indians played at Target Field last night and presumably used the same clubhouse as the Cardinals. The positives were part of the testing on Wednesday, July 29 prior to the game against the Twins in Minneapolis. Let the contact tracing begin.
This would be the third COVID-19 outbreak a week into the 2020 MLB season, with the Marlins and the Phillies postponing games until next week at the earliest. Those outbreaks caused postponements for the Orioles, Nationals, Blue Jays and Yankees as well; a total of six teams–a fifth of MLB–will be sidelined tonight because of COVID-19 outbursts. It also marks the first positive COVID-19 test outside the NL and AL East teams.
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