MIAMI _ Major League Baseball suspended the Miami Marlins' season through Sunday, and the Philadelphia Phillies will remain idled by the coronavirus pandemic until Friday, while the rest of baseball forges ahead with trepidation.
"There's real fear, there's real anxiety for me, for all my teammates,'' Milwaukee Brewers slugger Ryan Braun said Tuesday. "I think we've found it very difficult to focus on baseball at all the last couple of days.''
In the wake an outbreak that infected half the Marlins' team, Braun said MLB players are constantly assessing whether they should keep playing. Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said the season could be in jeopardy.
But MLB came up with a patchwork schedule for the rest of this week and said that among more than 6,400 tests conducted since Friday, there were no new positives among on-field personnel from any team other than the Marlins.
In a statement, MLB said it wanted to allow the Marlins time to focus on providing care for their players and plan for a resumption of play early next week. MLB also postponed the three remaining games in this week's Phillies-New York Yankees series.
The Marlins remained stranded in Philadelphia, where they played last weekend. The Phillies-Yankees games through Thursday were postponed ``out of an abundance of caution,'' MLB said, although no Phillies players have tested positive.
The Marlins received positive test results for four additional players, bringing their total to 15, a person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press. The person declined to be identified because the results had not been publicly released.
Nine players on the 30-man roster, two taxi squad players and two staff members tested positive earlier.
The Marlins had been scheduled to play at Baltimore on Wednesday and Thursday. Instead, the Yankees will play at Baltimore on those days.
Miami's three home games this weekend against Washington were postponed. Nationals players had voted against making the trip, manager Dave Martinez said.
"We all decided that it was probably unsafe to go there,'' Martinez said. ``It had nothing to do with the Miami Marlins. It was all about Miami and the state of Florida, this pandemic. They didn't feel safe.''
The Marlins underwent another round of tests Tuesday morning, as their outbreak raised anew questions about baseball's attempts to conduct a season.
"This could put it in danger,'' Fauci said on ABC's Good Morning America. "I don't believe they need to stop, but we just need to follow this and see what happens with other teams on a day-by-day basis.''
His comments came before word of the Marlins' latest test results.