St. Louis Cardinals News: ‘Multiple positive tests’ postpone Friday’s game

The St. Louis Cardinals won’t be playing their game on Friday as the reports confirm that there have been multiple positive COVID-19 tests.

The St. Louis Cardinals have now become the first team outside of the East that have had a player test positive for COVID-19 during the 2020 season.

The Cardinals were set to open a series at Miller Park Friday, but the game was immediately canceled.

While it hurts that the game is off, we are quickly gaining a better understanding of the situation and this was the right move. At first, we just knew that there was more than just one positive test, but now we have the number confirmed at just two players.

The team is reportedly isolating in their hotel, waiting for more test results before moving forward. We have no idea who the positives are, just that they are both pitchers. There have been no reports about whether or not the players who tested positive are showing symptoms, but we hope they are asymptomatic so that there are no chances of complications while the players are infected.

However, it is possible that the team could resume play on Saturday if the rest of the team tests negative.

On Thursday, the MLB and MLBPA agreed to make any doubleheaders needed for the 2020 season just seven innings. In doing this, it makes doubleheaders less of a detriment to the team.

From Derrick Goold, we now know that the team will make up Friday’s game with the league’s first seven-inning doubleheader on Sunday.

That is, of course, if there are not widespread positive tests on the team.

As for Saturday’s game, Mark Saxon confirmed that the game is still on for now.

If the cases are limited to just two and the Cardinals are rapid tested and nobody else is positive, this has to be looked at as a win for the Cardinals and the MLB’s protocol. Nobody wants positive tests, but when they happen, isolating the cases and ceasing play like this is exactly how the season will continue going.

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The whole situation with the Marlins was a complete failure by the league to minimize the impact of a positive test. Fans can be proud that the Cardinals did the right thing and canceled the game and isolating as soon as a positive result came back.

The 60-man player pool and taxi squads are there for a reason, this is the time to use them.

The names of the players who tested positive have not been announced, but we should get a pretty good idea of who it was when the team plays Saturday.

There have been whispers here and there that some Cardinals players have not been doing the best job of following league protocol, and whether or not this is true, it’s good to see that the MLB is going to be putting in compliance officers to make sure teams are following the rules. Every player has a responsibility to follow the rules if they want to make it through the 2020 season. It’s completely possible that the team was following the rules and still got it, but we don’t know yet.

In a perfect world, the rest of the team tests negative and the games resume with Saturday’s game going normally and a doubleheader on Sunday. The players who are positive are hopefully asymptomatic or have very minimal symptoms and can return when they test negative twice. Sadly it was going to be very hard for the Cardinals to completely avoid a positive the whole year, it just stinks to be the first team outside of the East to get it. But the team did handle it perfectly so far.