Due to COVID-19 issues on the Minnesota Twins series, the series opening series against Oakland Athletics was postponed from Monday, MLB announced on Sunday. The Twins’ previous two games scheduled for Saturday and Sunday against the Los Angeles Angels have also been postponed by Major League Baseball. Minnesota and Oakland will tentatively open their series on Tuesday with a double header.
Monday’s scheduled game between host Oakland Athletics and the Minnesota Twins at Oakland Coliseum has been postponed to allow for continued testing and contact tracing involving members of the Twins organization. Subject to change based on further test results, a traditional double-head is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. (PT).
The twins had to make the shortstop Andrelton Simmons injured on the COVID-19 list earlier this week, and then it was later revealed that at least five members of the travel party to Anaheim – not Simmons, because he did not undertake the trip – were away from the team during the trip due to positive tests or contact detection.
At a Zoom press conference, Rocco Baldelli, manager of the Twins, also said that they had another positive test on Saturday, which brought the total of members of the travel party to three positives.
As for the two Twins-Angels games, it’s going to be tough. Here are the shared challenges between the two teams, one of which is likely to hit a double header in Anaheim:
- April 29, but the twins play the previous day in Cleveland and the next day at home while the English from Texas have to fly home and then leave immediately to fly to Seattle.
- May 20 and the Angels would already be home Wednesday and Friday, but the twins would have to fly from Minnesota and leave for Cleveland immediately.
- August 23, but the English had to fly home from Cleveland and then immediately back to Baltimore. The twins will have it worse, fly from New York and then leave immediately to fly to Boston.
- September 2. The twins would come from home and then leave immediately to fly to Tampa Bay. The Angels would already be home.
- September 13th. The Angels must come home from Houston and then leave immediately to go to Chicago. The twins are in the middle of a homeland, so they will have a fast return flight with a double head in between.
- September 27. Both would be on homelands.
It seems the most comfortable to do May 20, but they can always shoot on September 27 and then cancel the matches if it does not affect the playoffs. The problem is that this is the last day off for each team and that rainfall or postponement of COVID-19 later in the season will not get the chance to keep up.