The Miami Marlins get a big win on Opening Day, but the mood still felt so different
On the field, Opening Day at Citizens Bank Park played out exactly as the Miami Marlins envisioned.
Sandy Alcantara dazzled for almost seven innings. The offense with three new faces at the top of the lineup produced when needed. The bullpen held its own.
The end result: A 5-2 win on the road against the Philadelphia Phillies.
“It’s good to get on the board,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said. “Feels like a big win, to be honest with you.”
It is a big win. The Marlins hadn’t won on Opening Day since 2014. The last time the Marlins had a winning record was on Aug. 29, 2017. They had never had a first-place standing in the National League East in July or later at any point in club history before Friday.
But Friday’s season opener, one delayed almost four months by the coronavirus, still felt a bit subdued at times and eerie at others when you pan out beyond the final results on the box score.
Players and coaches were feet apart from each other in the dugout. Some were relegated to the stands. A buzz of occasional piped-in crowd noise sliced through the silence of an empty ballpark meant to seat more than 43,000.
“It felt a lot like Atlanta,” said Mattingly, referring to the Marlins’ exhibition games against the Braves. “You know it’s Opening Day. You know it counts ... but I think this is the way it’s going to feel all season long.”
Welcome to Major League Baseball in 2020. It’s a 60-game season played under the cloud of a global pandemic and a fight for social justice. The hottest teams — and also perhaps the luckiest — will make the postseason. Safety measures and heightened precautions take priority and even then might not guarantee that a team comes out unscathed from the coronavirus.
“You’re going to have certain things that are going to happen to you in the course of the season, no matter what that would be,” Mattingly said Friday when asked about dealing with the coronavirus and the uncertainty it can create. “... We knew we were going to have to be ready for anything.”
The Marlins got their first taste of the unpredictability a few hours before first pitch Friday.
Catcher Jorge Alfaro, expected to handle the majority of Miami’s starts behind the plate this year, had to go on the Injured List. Neither manager Don Mattingly nor a team spokesperson divulged why Alfaro was put on the IL other than Mattingly saying they “plan on having him back.”
Teams do not have to disclose if a player is placed on the COVID-19 related IL nor does a player have to test positive to be placed on that list. Players on that list do not count against the 40-man roster or the 60-man player pool. Teams also can’t say if a player tested positive without the player’s consent.
Miami is far from the only team who dealt with last-second lineup adjustments before Opening Day. Outfielder Juan Soto received word of a confirmed positive test just before the Washington Nationals hosted the New York Yankees on Thursday to begin the season.
The Braves were without catchers Travis d’Arnaud and Tyler Flowers for their season opener against the Mets in New York on Friday after both showed symptoms for COVID-19 despite testing negative.
“In these times, the red flag goes up and you’re cautious,” Braves manager Brian Snitker told reporters. “If this had happened a year ago today, we’d bring them in, treat them and who knows, they’d probably still be available.”
“There’s no such thing as a common cold anymore,” added Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman, who himself missed the start of summer camp after testing positive for COVID-19 and at one point had a fever as high at 104.5 degrees. “If you have symptoms, this is what is going to happen.”
MLB overall has done a quality job of limiting exposure to COVID-19. Heading into Friday’s games, the league announced that it only had six positive COVID-19 results (four players, two staff) out of 10,939 tests taken over the past week. That’s a 0.05 percent positivity rate.
But teams and the league are still being hyperactive. Mattingly said he had his temperature taken six times on Thursday. Players, coaches and staff members are tested every other day and take anitbody tests once a month.
“This is not a secret: Everybody is concerned,” said catcher Francisco Cervelli, who recorded the first hit and scored the first run of the Marlins’ 2020 season after replacing Alfaro in the lineup. “I don’t want to have this virus or anyone on my team. We just have to be careful, man. ... Am I a little scared? Yes, but we’re here to play baseball. That’s it. The only thing I can control is myself and I think we made a promise here on the team that we’re going to take care of each other.”
They know anything can still happen.
“If you’re running a ballclub, there’s no way you’re not worried that it can happen to you,” Marlins president of baseball operations Michael Hill said. “You just continue to spread the message of being smart and being safe. There’s probably a little luck involved, but I know that the game marches on.”
The game certainly marched on Friday at Citizens Bank Park and other than the royal blue seatbacks being empty (outside of a few dozen cardboard cutouts behind home plate) carried on like normal.
A pre-game playlist started booming through the empty stadium about 45 minutes before first pitch with genres ranging from country (Chris Janson’s “Good Vibes”) to Americana (James Bay’s “Pink Lemonade”) to rock (Jet Black Stare’s “Ready to Roll”).
The public address announcer bellowed that Citizens Bank Park was “proud to welcome back baseball after an unprecedented time.”
The Phillies played a pre-game hype video, had walk-up music for each hitter and played “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and “God Bless America” before the bottom of the seventh inning.
But while so much was the same, so much was different, too.
Everyone wore masks during starting lineup introductions. Some, like the Marlins’ Jesus Aguilar and Harold Ramirez as well as the Phillies’ Andrew McCutchen, wore face coverings during the game, too.
A moment of unity was held before the national anthem, with players, coaches and staff from both teams lining up down the first- and third-base lines holding onto a large black “symbolic ribbon” to celebrate diversity and inclusion. No players on the Marlins or Phillies knelt during the anthem. The letters “BLM” were spray painted onto the pitcher’s mound. Both teams wore Black Lives Matter shirts during warmups and patches on their left sleeve during the game.
Mattingly and Phillies manager Joe Girardi had a socially distanced pre-game meeting at home plate with umpires that ended with an elbow bump instead of the normal handshake.
No lineup cards were physically exchanged. That’s being done digitally this year.
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The only presence of actual fans at Citizens Bank Park were beyond the stadium gates in center field. They cheered. They pleaded for the team to give catcher and former Marlin J.T. Realmuto a contract extension. And, as the game eventually got out of the Phillies’ hand, they booed. They were loud enough at times to drown out the faint piped-in crowd noise the team was using and occasionally get on the television broadcast.
“That’s something I won’t forgot,” Girardi said.
The Marlins, meanwhile, won’t forget the final result of the game.
They pulled ahead for good with a four-run sixth inning, highlighted by an Aguilar two-run home run and doubles from Corey Dickerson and Garrett Cooper. Miguel Rojas and Ramirez both scored after drawing walks. Miami out-hit Philadelphia 9-5 and had eight of nine players in the starting lineup either record a hit or drive in a run.
Sandy Alcantara held Philadelphia to just two runs (one earned) on three hits and two walks in 6 2/3 innings while striking out seven in his first career Opening Day start.
For a night, the Marlins looked like team they have been working toward becoming as Year 3 of this rebuild under the Bruce Sherman and Derek Jeter ownership group. Miami went 110-203 over the first two seasons after star talent at the big leagues was traded away in order to stock up a barren minor-league system.
This year was pegged as the one where improvement needed to be seen. Players such as Aguilar, Dickerson and Jonathan Villar were acquired in the offseason while the slew of top prospects acquired over the years finish their final steps of maturation. Players such as Brian Anderson and Alfaro (once he gets off the IL) are tabbed as being primed for breakout years. The pitching depth is evident.
“Obviously you’re not getting back the last few years,” Mattingly said, “but what we’ve been going through the past few years is going to hopefully make this feel better as we keep going.”
The goal now is to continue the push forward. The shortened season itself gives the Marlins a chance for the playoffs that would have
Their odds got slightly better Thursday, the eve of their season opener, when the league and the MLB Players Association agreed to expand the playoff field this season to 16 teams instead of the usual ten.
This gives the Marlins a little more margin for error. The team hopes it doesn’t need it even though it faces the league’s toughest schedule when looking at opponent winning percentage from last year.
“I think on the whole, it’ll be exciting for our industry,” Hill said Thursday. “Nothing’s really changed on our end. From Day One, we talked about how we prepare and what we prepare for.
This mad dash provides the Marlins an opportunity to be a realistic competitor for a playoff spot late in the season for the first time since 2016. That team was within four games of the eventual division winner Washington Nationals after 105 games before going 22-34 to close the season.
“We’ve got to keep going,” Aguilar said. “It’s going to be a short season, but I think we’re going to enjoy it.”
This story was originally published July 25, 2020 at 9:44 AM.
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