The Toronto Blue Jays spent the pandemic-shortened 2020 season playing home games in Buffalo in Sahlen Field. Unfortunately, the AL East organization will begin this spring away from the Rogers Centre once again.
According to a report from Shi Davidi and Ben Nicholson Smith, the Blue Jays will open up their 2021 campaign hosting games at TD Ballpark in Dunedin, Florida. The organization informed its staffers of the news in an internal e-mail on Wednesday, with the official announcement expected to come on Thursday.
The Blue Jays decided to make the decision to temporarily abandon Toronto much earlier this preseason than the organization did in 2020, helping to prevent a chaos akin to what happened last year. The team found itself without a home ballpark near the start of the season before eventually settling on Buffalo.
Similar to their NBA city counterparts, the Toronto Raptors, the Blue Jays will make way for Florida to kickstart their year.
The #BlueJays will begin the 2021 season playing their home games in Dunedin, Fla.
News story with @ShiDavidi up @Sportsnet https://t.co/Y31UIvaXZI
— Ben Nicholson-Smith (@bnicholsonsmith) February 18, 2021
Unlike 2020’s move to Buffalo, this season’s shift is expected to be temporary. As of now, the Blue Jays re-location will cover just two homestands. The first will come April 8-14 against the Los Angeles Angels and New York Yankees. The latter, just a few weeks later from April 27-May 2 versus the Washington Nationals and Atlanta.
The Blue Jays will then take nearly two weeks to assess the possibility of moving back to Toronto for their next home series starting on May 14.
At this point, re-locating back into Canada in mid-May seems optimistic. The Raptors announced a similar plan at the start of the NBA season in December and haven’t given any notion of a return.
The Toronto Blue Jays will likely have to be flexible on a timeline once the 2021 season gets underway. In the meantime, they can focus on chasing an AL East title.
The post Blue Jays Reportedly Decide On Location For 2021 Games appeared first on The Spun.
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