CLEVELAND — Major League Baseball officials postponed the series opener between the Cleveland Guardians and Pittsburgh Pirates on Friday because of poor air quality, as the fallout from Canadian wildfires continues to create unhealthy conditions in the Midwest and Northeast regions of the United States.
Team officials joined a call with the league office at 4:30 p.m. on Friday to talk through the final decision. The teams will reconvene at Progressive Field on Saturday for a split doubleheader, hoping that the hazy, smoky environment will relent.
MLB is assessing the air quality at several other games Friday night. The commissioner’s office has the authority to postpone, call or suspend a game because of issues related to air quality index (AQI). The league consults with the Major League Baseball Players Association, as well as the teams and medical and independent weather experts.
At Yankee Stadium ahead of the scheduled game between the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers, the Dodgers and Yankees went through their typical pregame routines.
“I know that the players got a players union text that says it’s a full go,” Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said before the Dodgers’ game in New York against the Yankees. “They feel good about it. The league feels good. I haven’t heard anything otherwise.”
Both the Pirates and Guardians conducted brief activity on the field Friday afternoon, but neither held a full batting practice session. Beneath a thick, gray sky, Guardians manager Stephen Vogt hit grounders to his infielders before conferencing with team president Chris Antonetti and other department leaders. Pirates pitchers played catch in right field until league officials, who had final say because these teams meet only once this season, moved the game to Saturday.
According to the website AirNow.gov, Cleveland had an air quality index of 203 at 5 p.m., which is deemed “very unhealthy.” The Guardians were told the AQI would probably worsen by the scheduled 7:10 first pitch, which factored into the decision.
“We have to do what’s best and what’s smart for both teams and for the fans,” Vogt said.
Several teams grappled with a similar decision Friday, after the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets played through hazy conditions at Citizens Bank Park on Thursday night. The Milwaukee Brewers plan to host the Miami Marlins as scheduled as of publication, but earlier Friday the Brewers offered fans the opportunity to exchange tickets if they didn’t feel comfortable attending that evening’s game.
Chicago Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner, the team’s union representative, said he had been in contact with the MLBPA leading up to Friday night’s game against the Minnesota Twins at Wrigley Field, where conditions had improved by an on-schedule first pitch at 7:05 p.m. CT.
“They’re saying it’s supposed to clear out,” Hoerner said at his locker before the game. “They haven’t given a specific threshold, like, ‘Once we’re below this, we’re OK.’ The winds change direction here. Now they’re blowing out, so that’s supposed to help. And it’s kind of gone down as the day went on.”
After attending Wednesday night’s Noah Kahan concert at Wrigley Field, Hoerner woke up in a city with the worst air quality in the world and returned to the ballpark for the team’s optional Thursday workout. “We were supposed to hit on the field,” he said, “and we were like, ‘Nah.’”
“It’s pretty scary,” said Hoerner, a Stanford graduate who grew up in the Bay Area. “You have to think about why, what’s actually going on there — people’s homes, and habitats, are burning in Canada. Anyone that hasn’t seen the footage, I think, probably should look that up and see what that looks like. Wildfires are a natural thing, but just the consistency and intensity that you’ve seen with them is a lot. It’s a product of a climate that is rapidly changing.”
This isn’t the first time the league has postponed games because of air quality. In June 2023, MLB postponed several games because of smoky air, and a game during the 2020 season between the Seattle Mariners and San Francisco Giants was postponed and later moved to San Francisco because of poor air quality in Seattle from wildfire smoke.
— Patrick Mooney, Brendan Kuty and Fabian Ardaya contributed to this report.
