Ron Roenicke has been pleased with how the Boston Red Sox have been dealing with Major League Baseball’s protocols pertaining to COVID-19. But, like with many things, there’s always room for improvement.
The Miami Marlins suffered an outbreak of the novel virus over the last two days, with 14 players and staff testing positive and forcing MLB to postpone two games scheduled for Monday.
Boston is scheduled to go to New York to play the Mets and Yankees before taking off for Florida — a coronavirus hot-spot. And Roenicke revealed he addressed the team Monday during a Zoom call about what they need to do to be more careful.
“… Just going over the points again about trying to follow protocols and to make sure this doesn’t happen to our team,” the manager told reporters during a Zoom call prior to the Red Sox’s game against the Mets at Fenway Park. “We’ve been very good so far. I love what we’ve done here. But we are going on the road, we need to be careful of what we do.
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“It’s something that I’m hopeful it scares them a little bit, … I know we’ve been good at this but we can be better,” Roenicke added. “We can stop fist-bumping we can stop doing the things the protocols are trying to get us not to do. And I realize the emotions that come into play when you score a run and whet you hit a home run, get a big strikeout, I understand all those things. But we have to keep reminding guys of trying to stay with the things that our medical department has said will keep us safe. And hopefully that continues and we’re able to go on the road and do the right things.”
New York has been able to contain COVID-19 of late, but Florida has seen an alarming spike in cases. So Roenicke is hopeful the players take that into consideration when traveling.
“Right now New York has done a good job, so we don’t want them to obviously just go out and be a normal time,” he said. “You may be OK walking to a place differently than maybe you do in Florida. Maybe you just try to stay in the hotel, which is what we’ve told them we’d like them to do is just stay there … and making them more aware of the places that are more at-risk than others. We’re gonna do this in every city that we go to. … I don’t want to make them fearful about going on the road, or fearful about playing and continuing on with this because I do feel like we’re doing a lot of good things.”
Despite the outbreak with Miami, MLB reportedly is not considering canceling the season.
First pitch between the Red Sox and Mets is set for 7:35 p.m. ET.
