MILWAUKEE, WI (WSAU) — One week away from the start of the abbreviated 2020 baseball season, Brewers Manager Craig Counsell says his club has managed to stay healthy.
“We have a policy in place that if tests results aren’t back, we will not work out,” said Counsell. “[That goes for] the player or the whole team. Fortunately, we have had our results back within the time window that we needed to practice.”
He says going into the 60-game sprint healthy will be important to early success. Usually by this point, the team has close to 100 games under its belt. This year many players may not be conditioned to playing a full schedule immediately.
“When we get to the first part of our schedule there are a lot of games with not many days off. Guys will need days off,” he said.
Baseball has built-in protections for lineups by allowing clubs to carry 30 players for the first week of the season, a number that will go down to 24 by the third week. Additional players will travel with the team so they can be added to the game-day roster at a moment’s notice in case someone does test positive for COVID-19 and needs to be replaced.
Milwaukee’s schedule starts on July 24th with a series against the Chicago Cubs. The team will play the entire season against the nine teams in the NL and AL Central.
WSAU will have one additional Best of the Brewers broadcast on Sunday, July 19th and will carry the complete regular-season schedule.
