Phillies

Phillies Will Bus to New York With Initial COVID Test Results Reportedly Coming Back Negative

By Bob Wankel

Published: Jul 28th, 2020 · 10:57 AM EDT

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The Miami Marlins received more bad news on Tuesday morning, that four additional players tested positive for COVID-19, meaning essentially half of the Opening Day roster has now tested positive.

The early reports are a bit more encouraging for the Phillies, however, with word first emerging from New York Post baseball writer Joel Sherman that the team currently has no positive test results.

That has since been confirmed:

No Philadelphia Phillies players or coaches tested positive in the most recent batch of coronavirus tests, sources tell me and @JeffPassan.

— Jesse Rogers (@JesseRogersESPN) July 28, 2020

Despite the postponement of tonight’s game at Citizens Bank Park between the Phillies and Yankees, NBC Sports Philadelphia’s Jim Salisbury reports the Phils intend to take a bus trip to the Bronx tomorrow:

With tonight's game postponed, Phillies are planning to bus to New York tomorrow for tomorrow night's game at Yankee Stadium.

— Jim Salisbury (@JimSalisbury215) July 28, 2020

For the time being, it would seem the two teams intend to play Wednesday night.

Despite the mess with the Marlins, which is an extremely serious situation – one that illustrates the difficult realities baseball must deal with in order to pull off this season – the lack of cross-clubhouse transmission would be an encouraging development.

Of course, it has been well-documented that COVID-19 can take days for transmission to yield a positive result, so, from this viewpoint, today’s news, while encouraging, is simply just the first hurdle cleared. The Phillies will again be tested today. While not even another round of completely negative results would fully quell concerns, it would seemingly be enough to get them back on the field tomorrow night. One could argue the wisdom of such a decision, but, well, welcome to baseball in 2020.

As for the bigger picture, if there’s any silver lining to emerge from this past weekend at Citizens Bank Park, it’s that perhaps teams and players that had any false sense of security about the severity of the situation will tighten things up.