Jordan Milbrath got the news he didn’t want to hear on Tuesday.

Milbrath, a 2010 Springfield High School graduate and a member of the Arizona Diamondbacks organization, was battling for a roster spot this spring before the COVID-19 outbreak suspended baseball operations.

On Tuesday, Major League Baseball announced that Minor League Baseball will be suspending its season indefinitely, and there’s a chance that there won’t be a minor league season at all.

This news means that Milbrath might not get a chance to play minor league baseball if he doesn’t make the big league roster, assuming they have a season at some point.

He took the news hard.

“It’s terrible news, I mean it’s the last thing you want to hear as a player,” he said. “It’s the last thing you want to hear as a player, you just love playing baseball and it’s all I’ve known for the past seven seasons. The one I know from the last three weeks is that I miss baseball and I just wish I was playing again. But ending the contracts doesn’t help, either.”

Milbrath said that MLB announced that each minor league player’s contract will be suspended as of this past Tuesday. Milbrath did say that each player will receive a check of $400 each week in the meantime until May 31. He said at that point, they will re-evaluate the situation.

Milbrath and his wife are on their way back to Springfield for now since he won’t be competing anytime soon. They’re leaving Scottsdale Saturday morning.

“We got told maybe two, three weeks ago that they were going to send everyone home in the wake of the pandemic,” Milbrath said. “My wife and I had rented a place in Scottsdale, we rented it through the end of Spring Training, which was supposed to be April 4, so we’re driving back to Minnesota with all of our stuff with the intent of going to whatever team they put me on. We decided to wait it out to see how MLB was going to handle the situation, so we’ve been just down here. They closed down the minor league facilities so I’ve been working out on my own, just getting by with other guys who are down here.”

As of now, he plans on working in Springfield as a financial advisor.

“I do that during the season anyway, so before I left I tried to not start any new projects,” he said. “There’s always work to be done so I can jump right in and start new projects.”

Like everyone else, Milbrath is trying to get take things day by day and he’s hoping everything can get back to normal soon.

“The hardest part is not knowing what’s going to happen,” he said. “It’s hard to blame the organizations, even local businesses, the high schools, they’re all going through the same thing of not knowing what to do or exactly when life will get back to normal.”