The theme leading up to the start of the baseball season has been the theme for much of society in this year of coronavirus: Adapting.
“Everything is going to be different about this year. We’ve just kind of got to go with it,” said Brewers pitcher Brandon Woodruff to WTMJ’s Gene Mueller on Wisconsin’s Morning News. Woodruff will start tonight’s COVID-19-delayed season opener at the Chicago Cubs (5:35 p.m. on WTMJ).
“There’s not a time you go into Wrigley Field and there’s zero fans. That’s going to be weird…you hear the lights buzzing a little bit, a really eerie feeling. Those are the cards we’ve been dealt. We’ve got to find a way to get ourselves focused and our team focused, and get ready to play.”
Woodruff is also anticipating a rather different situation in the locker room tonight, with the necessity of physical distancing and a very small visitors’ clubhouse at Wrigley Field.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how that looks,” he explained. “We’ll see when we go in and see if they’ve added any extra locker rooms. It will be curious to see how that works out.”
The 60-game season and expanded rosters lend themselves more toward the “outgetters” pitching philosophy of manager Craig Counsell, one which tends to shorten a starting pitcher’s outing and focus more on the use of relievers.
“I’m still wired to go nine innings. That’s just my mentality, but coming up in the minors…if you were throwing well, you stayed in the game,” said Woodruff.
“It’s a 60 game season. It’s going to be a little different. It’s going to be kind of a win-now approach. Hopefully that plays differently into the strategy that we use as a staff. We’ll have more pitchers, more relievers.”