Dodgers links: Construction at Dodger Stadium, an interview with Vin Scully

In an alternate timeline, the Freeway Series would have been played Monday and Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium, the first public view of upgrades to Dodger Stadium in preparation of hosting the All-Star Game this season.

Those two exhibition games were originally planned to be played with the outfield sections closed, with final touches to the construction in the outfield plaza completed over a few more days to get ready for opening day on Thursday.

Obviously the baseball side of those plans vanished, but the construction has been ongoing for the last three weeks. But for the most part the construction progress went as planned.

“All the field-facing stuff, like the seating, the drink rails, and the bar, is ready to go, would have been ready to go on Thursday,” Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten said Monday in a Q&A on the team’s YouTube channel. “We still have stuff in the plaza that is being filled in right now.”

Under the statewide “stay at home” order issued by California governor Gavin Newsom on March 19, among the essential and critical infrastructure jobs classified by the state, and thus allowed to leave home for work, include “construction workers who support the construction, operation, inspection, and maintenance of construction sites and construction projects.”

Construction remains ongoing at Dodger Stadium, albeit with more precautions.

“It has slowed down, and some crews are smaller,” Kasten said. “We are, and everyone, is fully compliant with all the regulations of the county, the city, and state, as well as the [Centers for Disease Control] and [World Health Organization].”

Links

• This is a day late, but here is Vin Scully’s interview with Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, in which he talked about baseball’s coronavirus hiatus. The entire five-minute audio is worth a listen, during which Scully said, “We’re not going to have a full season, because this thing is burning up days like a rainstorm.”
• Gavin Lux and Dustin May are the Dodgers’ top two prospects per Baseball America, ranked fourth and 20th in baseball, respectively, and were set to grace the cover of the print magazine for their minor league season preview, but that was before everything got postponed. Now, those two are relegated to the table of contents of the current issue: