We’ve already seen mini-shoots of COVID-19 at the Major League Baseball team’s facility in Florida, impacting both the Philadelphia Phillies and Toronto Blue Jays. The Arizona Diamondbacks had positive results for multiple people, as did the Colorado Rockies, the Seattle Mariners, the San Francisco Giants, the New York Mets, the Los Angeles Angels, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Cubs. from Chicago.
If that reads like it’s naming all the teams out there, well that’s the point. This virus will continue to infiltrate almost every aspect of our society at this rate, and with baseball actively trying to open up in the midst of it, positive tests are almost inevitable for every franchise.
The Cincinnati Reds are no different, and it was revealed today that a couple of Reds players have tested positive, according to Mark Sheldon of MLB.com.
#reds have two players in the organization who tested positive for COVID-19. Neither of them tested in Cincinnati and neither is currently in Cincinnati.
– Mark Sheldon (@m_sheldon) July 2, 2020
As that tweet suggests, the names of the two players were not disclosed. That said, it will be pretty obvious to anyone who can add 2 to 2 and get 4 which players this virus is affecting, something the Phillies made evident earlier today with a quick look at their transactions. Unannounced IL movements due to ‘undisclosed ailments’ are certainly nebulous in themselves, but since almost all IL locations come with a specific reason (as Jarrett Seidler of Baseball Prospectus noted), saying nothing is saying it all. .
The Reds’ first official training is scheduled for tomorrow (Friday), at which point it will probably begin to become clear which players this horrible virus has affected. I’m not even saying that like I’m looking to be a PI, it’s just going to be very easy to look around and notice which players aren’t there right now.
Plus, it’s less of an attempt to put together an easy puzzle at this point in the season and more of a set-up exercise for it to happen one, two, five times to multiple players again throughout the entire process of playing a regular 60-game season. in the middle of a pandemic. This is news in itself, yes, but it is also just setting the protocols for when we will inevitably transmit similar information in the future, as at this point I am convinced that we will see this appear again and again.
Neither is in Cincinnati, as aired earlier in Sheldon’s tweet, and I hope they are quarantined and recover without pain or hindrance. This new normal is simply brutal.
