Only hours after it was reported that Cleveland Guardians manager Terry Francona had tested positive for COVID-19, news broke that the team was dealing with an outbreak. As a result, Wednesday afternoon’s game between the Guardians and host Chicago White Sox has been postponed.
Per MLB.com’s Mandy Bell, Guardians bench coach DeMarlo Hale — who had been slated to take over managerial duties in Francona’s absence — is another one of the members of the team to receive a positive test.
Cleveland is scheduled for an off-day on Thursday before starting a weekend series on the road against the Minnesota Twins on Friday. The White Sox are slated to play the New York Yankees at home on Thursday.
The two teams don’t have a shared off-day before they are scheduled to play again in Chicago starting July 22, right after the All-Star break.
According to an ESPN report, this is the first MLB game postponed this season because of COVID-19 after the league postponed nine of 2,429 games last season. Forty five games out of 900 were postponed due to COVID-19 during the shortened 2020 season.
