Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY
Released 2: 46 p.m. ET July 23, 2020| Upgraded 4: 57 p.m. ET July 23, 2020
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What I’m Hearing: Just hours before Opening Day, Nationals superstar Juan Soto checked favorable for COVID-19 Any excitement related to baseball’s return was met with the severe reality of the pandemic, says Gabe Lacques.
USA TODAY
Major League Baseball’s prime-time return in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic was dealt an unsettling blow when among its biggest young stars checked positive for the novel coronavirus prior to he might take the field in 2020.
Juan Soto, the Washington Nationals’ stunning 21- year-old outfielder, was omitted from the opening-day roster after a favorable test for COVID-19, basic supervisor Mike Rizzo verified Thursday, just hours before the safeguarding World Series champs were to open the season with a nationally-televised video game against the New York Yankees.
Soto was among a group of Nationals who were quarantined for 14 days at the start of the team’s “summer season camp” in Washington after he flew on an MLB-chartered flight from the Dominican Republic to Miami with a traveler who ultimately evaluated positive for COVID-19 Soto rejoined the team July 16 and played in exhibit video games versus Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Rizzo states Soto is asymptomatic after taking the test Tuesday and getting the results Thursday early morning, and says no other Nationals will be not available for the opener due to call tracing implications. Nationals manager Dave Martinez stated Soto tested negative four times before Thursday’s positive result.
As part of its plan to go back to play following a nearly four-month shutdown due to COVID-19, gamers are checked every other day, with results expected to be provided within 24 to 48 hours. Soto is at least the 70 th MLB gamer to openly acknowledge screening positive; the vast majority of those positives happened throughout intake screening around July 1 or earlier this summer.
Even if Soto is healthy, the favorable test result will sideline him for a significant part of MLB’s 60- video game season. There is no specified isolation period in MLB’s health and wellness procedures, but a gamer needs to test negative in consecutive tests at least 24 hours apart, pass a health screening and be authorized by doctors from MLB and the players’ association.
Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman checked negative for COVID-19 at the start of summer camp, but produced a positive test taken around July 9. While Yankees GM Brian Cashman stated Wednesday that Chapman is asymptomatic and working out in the house, he continues screening positive for COVID-19
Soto played in an exhibition against the Orioles as recently as Tuesday night; MLB’s health and wellness protocols launched before players went back to team centers notes that only players who have entered “close contact,” as defined by the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) need to pass an expedited diagnostic test and be checked every day for 7 consecutive days.
The CDC’s definition of “close contact” is someone “living in the very same family, being within 6 feet of somebody for fifteen minutes or longer, or being in direct contact with secretions from a sick individual with COVID-19(e.g., being coughed on). Close contact does not include quick interactions, such as walking previous somebody.”
Soto hit 34 home runs and drove in 110 runs for the Nationals in 2019, and then added 5 more crowning achievement in the postseason, consisting of three in their seven-game World Series accomplishment over the Houston Astros.
” It crushed me when I discovered,” Martinez stated on a video call Thursday.
Anthony Fauci, the renowned immunologist and a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, is set up to throw out the first pitch prior to Thursday’s video game.
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