Colorado Rockies: Tony Wolters on the Rockies’ situation handling of return

On the first day of summer training, Colorado Rockies catcher Tony Wolters spoke with the media.

Colorado Rockies baseball is back. On Saturday, the Rockies started their summer training session, including players taking hacks in the batting cages and pitchers pitching off of the mound. After taking batting practice, Rockies catcher Tony Wolters spoke with the Rockies media in attendance at Coors Field via Zoom, including Rox Pile’s Kevin Henry.

Among discussion of a few other things, Wolters was asked about how COVID-19 is impacting the Rockies, since they had a few players, including Charlie Blackmon, test positive and, therefore, are not participating yet.

He spoke on how the Rockies are handling the situation well.

"“…The Rockies, here, have done a good job [with the situation],” said Wolters. “We’ve had multiple meetings about this and how we’re going to plan an attack of how we’re all going to treat this whole situation and how we’re going to be safe. The healthiest teams are going to be, probably, the more successful teams this year…”"

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One of the things that the Rockies are doing for the media is ensuring more spacing between reporters in the press box and, at least as of now, they are interviewing players and coaches via Zoom, where the media members remain in the press box and the players are in the Rockies clubhouse.

Other than baseball, Wolters is “focused” on another thing before the season starts: finding a mask that works well under his catcher’s mask. This is, at least partially, due to the proximity to the umpire and the batter that Wolters and other catchers would have. Whether or not the distancing between the catcher, batter, and the home-plate umpire is changed is still up in the air.

For umpires, the vast majority of them are older than the players (some are in their mid-to-late 60s) and they usually travel more than teams do. However, as of now, they are likely to be more in a smaller area (perhaps West, Central, and East divisions, depending on where they reside) and, perhaps, stay for an entire homestand. When they do travel, two possibilities are that they would travel on team charters (since charters are private and umpires regularly fly commercial) or drive between cities.

Some umpires will also be working later in summer training when teams play intrasquad games.

We will have plenty of interviews in the coming days and weeks from Coors Field so stay tuned for our coverage.