ST. LOUIS — It was sweltering here Monday afternoon, so Rob Thomson walked into the Phillies clubhouse and made an announcement. “We’re hitting inside,” the interim manager said. No one protested. They had worked hard to pull themselves from the depths of May; the All-Star break is within sight and the Phillies are relevant. But the final days before that respite present a challenge to keep the momentum flowing.

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The schedule is enough of a test. The Blue Jays excel at home in Toronto. Sandy Alcántara awaits in Miami. The Phillies will arrive at both cities in the wee hours. They need everyone, but Tuesday and Wednesday in Toronto, they will play shorthanded. J.T. Realmuto and Alec Bohm, who dislocated a finger Monday night, are not vaccinated for COVID-19. They are not permitted to enter Canada. Neither are Aaron Nola and Kyle Gibson, who weren’t slated to start. Those players, with the possible exception of Bohm, will be placed on the restricted list for the two games in Toronto and will forfeit pay and service time. The Phillies will go with a bullpen game Tuesday — the second one in three days.

Inside that clubhouse, no one expressed anger about their unvaccinated teammates. Baseball players are wired to focus on the task at hand with the people available. “Honestly,” Rhys Hoskins said, “I don’t know if there’s any type of feeling in the clubhouse about it.” Hoskins stood in the dugout, an hour before he began Monday’s 6-1 loss to the Cardinals with a solo homer, and portrayed a team that is locked in and chasing its postseason goal.

But front offices spend countless hours mining value at the margins to benefit the team and players spend countless hours pushing their bodies to benefit the team. It wasn’t disappointing that four teammates chose not to participate for two days?

“I’m disappointed in the fact that guys won’t be there because we won’t be at full strength,” Hoskins said. “But I’m not disappointed in anybody’s decision. I don’t think that’s anyone’s place to do that. Really.”

These Phillies have weathered so much in the season’s first 87 games, so it has become a rallying point. It is unclear whether Bohm’s absence will extend beyond the two Toronto games; the Phillies were still discussing scenarios Monday night as they boarded a charter flight to Toronto while Bohm stayed behind to fly to Miami on Tuesday. They could put Bohm on the injured list Tuesday and he would be eligible to return July 22 — the first game after the All-Star break.

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“If anything good could come out of today,” Realmuto said, “it’s the fact that he didn’t break his finger.”

As Realmuto stood at his locker, his teammates packed for Toronto. Realmuto arranged for a gym in Miami to host workouts for the unvaccinated Phillies players this week. Major League Baseball does not have restrictions for unvaccinated players in 2022. Canada has imposed a vaccine mandate on those entering the country. So Realmuto will forfeit close to $260,000. “I’m not going to let Canada tell me what I do and don’t put in my body for a little bit of money,” Realmuto said. “It’s just not worth it.” Realmuto said his teammates knew how he felt about them. He called it “an extremely unfortunate situation.”

“I’m a healthy 31-year-old professional athlete and I just didn’t feel the need to get it,” Realmuto said. “I’ve had COVID a couple of times. Super mild symptoms. Back when it first came out. When it came time to decide whether I needed a vaccine or not, I talked with a couple of doctors that I knew and told them my story. Just really decided I didn’t think I needed it. I wasn’t going to take it just because I was told to, basically.”

Team officials have known this day was coming. The Phillies did not have as many placements on the restricted list as they had anticipated; some of that was the product of a roster dance in the days leading up to the Toronto trip.

“I’d prefer to have a full club, there’s no doubt,” president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said. “But that’s the reality of today’s world, and we need to make the adjustments because we still have a lot of good players and we look forward to taking them there.”

The Phillies optioned Bailey Falter to Triple A after his start last week despite having no one to make his scheduled start Tuesday. Dombrowski said there was a reason for that, but he could not elaborate. “I can’t get into individuals who are not put on the list, who’s vaccinated and who’s not,” Dombrowski said. “It’s not allowed.” By demoting Falter for an extra reliever over the weekend, the Phillies might have avoided putting him on the restricted list.

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Connor Brogdon, who contracted COVID-19 while in California last month, has now missed three weeks. It’s unclear whether he was even eligible to play in Toronto; the Phillies decided to extend his time at Triple-A Lehigh Valley and expect him to return Friday in Miami. Johan Camargo (knee soreness) didn’t feel right after his latest minor-league game, so his return could be delayed until Friday too.

The Phillies did not have to place Nola on the restricted list because he started Monday’s series finale in St. Louis. He was not going to appear in Toronto. But, by doing it, they reduced the number of active pitchers on the roster. That will allow them to add a pitcher for Tuesday’s bullpen game. Andrew Bellatti will start it.

They technically cannot replace either Nola or Gibson on Tuesday. They must play with 24 active players. But 13 of them can be pitchers. (On Wednesday, the Phillies will be permitted a 25th player as a replacement for Gibson because it will have been three days since he last pitched.)

The Phillies have looked to provide an extra day of rest for everyone in the rotation whenever possible, but the Toronto situation prompted them to flip Gibson with Zack Wheeler, which meant Wheeler would make two straight starts on four days’ rest. It’s not a significant change — Wheeler could have an extended break after Wednesday — but everyone is cognizant of his workload after he pitched a career-high 213 1/3 innings a season ago.

The roster minutiae added another layer to a challenging stretch. The Phillies have played good baseball for weeks. They’d prefer to carry some momentum into the All-Star break.

The entire situation was complicated by a number of factors. The Phillies, in a four-day span last month, had to place two starting pitchers on the IL. The hope was for Zach Eflin or Ranger Suárez — or both — to pitch in Toronto. Instead, the Phillies had already dipped into their rotation depth by using Falter and Cristopher Sánchez as fill-ins. Two other minor-league starters, Hans Crouse and James McArthur, are hurt. The Phillies entered this week with two healthy pitchers, outside of Falter, as reserves on the 40-man roster: Kent Emanuel and Francisco Morales.

Emanuel, who has been pitching as a starter in the minors, would be a logical candidate to log innings in Toronto. It was unclear whether the Phillies would tab him. Only catcher Rafael Marchan was revealed as a roster replacement.

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“The status of who we bring up is affected,” Dombrowski said, “because we do have people at Lehigh Valley who are not vaccinated also.”

The Phillies are permitted to replace players on the restricted list with anyone in the organization. They are not limited to 40-man roster members.

As a company, the Phillies have a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for their full-time employees. It does not cover players. The team’s athletic trainers, in conjunction with outside doctors and front-office officials, have made various presentations over the last two years to convince players to get vaccinated. The club, in particular, was aggressive in swaying some minor-league players who were unvaccinated. The quiet part didn’t need to be said out loud: Promotions might be at stake if a player wasn’t vaccinated.

The outreach to the big-league players did not convince everyone. But at least one player decided during this season to be vaccinated for the good of the team.

“We can’t tell a government what to do,” Kyle Schwarber said. “It is what it is. Trust me, yeah, I have it, but I don’t push (it) on people. It’s a person’s own decision. If you want to get it, great. If you don’t, fine. I’m not going to treat you any differently. Nor should anyone.”

Gibson cited his ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease, as his reason for not getting vaccinated. “The medicines I take don’t let me build up antibodies,” Gibson said. The Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation has said it supports its eligible patients being vaccinated. Bohm did not cite a specific reason. “It’s just my choice,” he said.  Same for Nola. “I just didn’t want to do it,” Nola said.

“It’s their decision,” Thomson said. “They have every right to make whatever decision they want to make based on their health and what they think is best for them. If you know those guys and you see those guys on a daily basis, you know that they want to win. So, this is more about health and decisions they made.”

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The leaders inside the clubhouse echoed that. Maybe this’ll be a footnote come October. Maybe not.

“It’s life, right?” Schwarber said. “It kind of goes a little bigger than a game. It could be personal beliefs, religious beliefs, something like that, right? Yeah, we are playing a game. That’s what we get paid to do, but people have to make that decision for themselves, for their personal lives and for their families. When we go to Toronto and we don’t have those guys there, there’s not going to be one hard feeling. We’re just going to have to go out there and win a baseball game.”

(Top photo of J.T. Realmuto and Dylan Carlson: Jeff Roberson / Associated Press)