In light of two teams suffering COVID-19 outbreaks, Major League Baseball has made a change to the roster size for the remainder of the season.
Teams had been allowed to carry 30 players since the start of the season. That was slated to go down to 28 on Thursday, and then to 26 after two weeks. As first reported by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, however, the league still stick with 28-man rosters for the remainder of the season, as well as the postseason.
Union telling players that roster size will reduce to from 30 and 28 on Thursday and remain at that level for the rest of the season and postseason, source tells The Athletic. Taxi squad will be expanded from three players to five players for remainder of the season.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) August 4, 2020
In addition to the outbreaks, numerous teams have had one or two players test positive at any given time. Expanding the roster size will allow teams to deal with these issues more easily without having to rely on the taxi squads.
There was originally some consideration to extending 30-man rosters, but 28 appears to be a fair compromise for the rest of the season.
