MLB.com’s Jon Heyman reported this morning that all Cincinnati Reds players who were tested on Saturday tested negative for COVID-19 on Saturday. That report comes about 33 hours after the first report that a player in the organization tested positive earlier in the week, with the result of that test coming in Friday night, leading to the postponement of both Saturday and Sunday games between Cincinnati and the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Hear that all of the Reds’ tests yesterday were negative, bidding well for their return next week
– Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) August 16, 2020
Well, if you will excuse the early rating above, this report is not entirely clear if every Reds player has been tested or not. The assumption here is that they were, because why on earth would not every player be tested given the situation? But, the tweet specifically says that all Reds players tested negative yesterday and that could very well be different from “all players tested negative yesterday”. Maybe it just wasn’t Heyman’s biggest choice of words here.
Cincinnati will continue testing with the hope that they could potentially return to playing after their plan off-day on Monday if the next two days also do not bring back positive tests. They have a long road trip set to begin on Tuesday with a 2-game series in Kansas City, a 4-game series to follow in St. Louis. for a set over 4 days over three days with Chicago.
Update at 11:20 p.m.
Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said this morning that it sounds like the Reds follow-up tests came back negative today that there will be a doubles header between the two teams on Monday. He also notes that the Pirates stayed in Cincinnati.
Sounds like if Reds follow-up tests come back negative today, we’ll see that doubleheader tomorrow in Cincinnati.
– Jason Mackey (@JMackeyPG) August 16, 2020
