For first time in 2020, Nats face challenges of road trip

The Nationals woke up this morning in a vaguely familiar, yet wholly foreign place: in a hotel room in New York.

It's the first time anyone with the team has spent the night anywhere other than his Washington-area place of residence since summer training camp opened more than five weeks ago. That's an unprecedented stretch for any baseball club not to travel in-season, made possible only by the unprecedented nature of the 2020 season.

The Nats should have gone to Toronto and Miami by now. But, of course, they couldn't go to either, not after the Blue Jays were told by the Canadian government they had to find somewhere else to play this season, and not after the Marlins roster was ravaged by positive coronavirus tests, leading to the postponement of last weekend's scheduled series in South Florida.

At long last, though, a playable road series awaits. The Nationals took a chartered train from D.C. to New York on Sunday evening, then checked into their Manhattan hotel. They'll face the Mets the next four days at Citi Field, then return to the mid-Atlantic for a three-game series with the Orioles at Camden Yards before hopping on their first charter flight of the season and a three-game series in Atlanta.

Forgive them if they're holding their breaths just a little bit that this all goes off without any complications.

"I'm not nervous," general manager Mike Rizzo insisted Sunday morning during a Zoom session with reporters. "I trust these players. I trust the group we have to do the right thing. I've been impressed by MLB's protocols that they've put in place. So I feel good about the trip."

It's all about the protocols this season, especially on the road. And the protocols keep expanding to cover any and all scenarios a team might face while away from home.

There are pages and pages of detailed policies everyone must adhere to, but it really can be condensed down to a couple of sentences:

* If you're not at the ballpark, you must be at the hotel.

* Don't do anything other than play baseball, prepare to play baseball and eat approved meals at the ballpark or the hotel.

"In order to keep everybody safe, we've got to stay in the hotel," manager Davey Martinez said. "There's going to be different things we need to do, and there's not going to be any gallivanting around the cities anymore. A lot of these cities, honestly, are pretty much closed down and there's not a whole lot going on. But we've got to be smart. If we're going to pull this off and we're going to be safe, the best thing to do is stay in the hotel and chill."

It sounds simple enough, but it truly is a test of mind and body. Ballplayers, coaches and others who travel throughout the year get used to the rhythm and the routine of road trips.

Everyone has a favorite breakfast spot in each opposing city. Some guys like to walk around town. Others like to experience local nightlife.

You take a taxi or an Uber to the ballpark on your own schedule, and once there you settle into your personal pregame routine.

None of that can happen in 2020, at least not in a manner anyone has experienced before. Everything is planned out in advance, and there are no exceptions. You travel only on team buses, and there will be many to allow for social distancing. You eat whatever is provided to you by catering companies at the ballpark or the hotel restaurant away from the stadium.

The Nationals are even looking to hold their pre-series positional meetings in a hotel ballroom many hours before first pitch, instead of the usual gatherings inside a clubhouse office just prior to batting practice.

"I know we're trying really hard to do all our meetings at the hotel in a conference room," Martinez said. "To spread out so nobody's sitting at the ballpark all together. That's what they don't want. We're working on all these different things right now to see if we can get a big enough conference room to have little small group meetings with our hitters and our pitchers, and do it before we get on the bus."

Every other Major League Baseball club has already traveled this season under the original guidelines that offered suggestions but weren't 100 percent stringent. Now, following outbreaks among both the Marlins and Cardinals, MLB has sent out revised protocols that strictly prohibit anyone from leaving the hotel without specific approval.

How is that going to be enforced? Martinez joked that Rizzo would be standing guard in the lobby all night, looking for anyone trying to sneak in or out. In reality, MLB has contracted security personnel to handle the job.

For some, it may not be difficult. For others, confinement to hotel room for hours every day will be more of a challenge.

"They're going to go from the charter plane to the team bus to the team hotel, and then back and forth to the ballpark," Rizzo said. "They're going to have to deal with the monotony of it."

Policing also comes from within. Nobody wants to be the one who gets caught breaking protocols - like the Indians' Zach Plesac, who was sent home by the club after he went out on the town in Chicago on Saturday - and certainly nobody wants to be responsible for spreading the virus through the entire clubhouse and causing the postponement of a week or more of games.

The Nationals, with a roster full of veterans, insist it won't be a problem.

"I think that's the reason why a lot of us chose to play this year, because we trust each other in the clubhouse," shortstop Trea Turner said. "I think we have a lot of faith in one another to do the right thing and think about the guy next to you and not just yourself."

It sounds simple enough. But to this point, it's all been theoretical, just a bunch of pages of typed-out protocols.

Now the Nationals will find out how it actually works in practice. And whether or not everybody in the traveling party can adhere to the plan and avoid the temptations, big and small, that await on the road.

"We've got to be smart," Martinez said. "We can't go out. If we're going to pull this off, we've got to stay in. I know it stinks. We'll go to Tampa soon, and my kids understand I won't be able to see them. I'll be at the hotel. But they get it. They understand. And hopefully when this is all over, I'll be able to spend a lot of time with them."