Braves Talk - One Week Away

Will we make it? We are thissssss close to a baseball season. A week away.

Next Friday at 4:10 pm ET, the Braves will play the New York Mets. We expect it to be Jacob deGrom for the Mets, while we know Mike Soroka will pitch for the Braves.

The momentum seems like it's pointing toward the season will at least start. That's all we can ask, right? We do still have to hope nothing happens to jeopardize the season.

It's a good sign that the Nationals and Yankees will be able to play at Nationals Park next Thursday. There was concern that might not happen. We still have to worry a bit about the situation in Toronto.

There was good news Friday as MLB and the MLBPA announced that only six of the 10,548 samples taken last week, 0.05%, have been new positives for COVID-19. Five were players and one was a staff member. Also, there were five days that had zero positive tests results.

Overall monitoring samples collected/tested have been 17,949. There have been 23 positives, with 18 players and five staff members. Thirteen different clubs have had a covered individual test positve during monitoring testing.

So, let's hope those are positive enough numbers to where we can have the baseball season begin. It will be a daily challenge for two months to pull this off, but let's just get it started.

Listen to The Bill Shanks Show weekdays at 3:00 p.m. ET on Middle Georgia’s ESPN. You can listen online at TheSuperStations.com. Follow Bill on Twitter at @billshanks and you can email him at thebillshanksshow@yahoo.com.