Analysis: Reports that a Reds player tested positive for COVID-19 [UPDATED]

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Several updates:

UPDATE: No other positive tests, so far. But please ignore the last sentence of this tweet. It shows a stunning ignorance of how the virus works for a person who is has been immersed in this industry for the past few months. Explained below.

All the remaining tests from Reds and Pirates came back negative after one Red had a positive. So postponement tonight is out of caution.

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) August 15, 2020

Important: This is good news. But it’s limited. It doesn’t mean there won’t be positive tests in the next few days.

1. Incubation (and positive results) happen at different speeds, from 3-14 days from exposure. Someone who was exposed to the virus the same time the positive player was might still test positive from that exposure. 
2. A player who was exposed to the virus by being around the one positive player yesterday, wouldn’t test positive today. 

UPDATE: The Reds-Pirates game scheduled for tonight has been postponed according to source, but not announced officially yet. Tomorrow’s game exceedingly likely (ESPN) be postponed. Reports now of possible double-header (those 7-inning games) with Pirates on Monday (Fay). 

MLB UPDATE: MLB announces Saturday and Sunday games canceled due to player testing positive. So this is official news on both fronts, the scheduling and the positive test result.

Analysis: The idea of a double-header on Monday sounds dubious. Doubt MLB will have confidence the rest of the Reds and Pirates are negative by then. But who knows. The “protocols” change with each circumstance.

Just after midnight, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic and Jeff Passan of ESPN reported that a Reds player has tested positive for COVID-19:

A Reds player has tested positive for COVID-19, sources tell The Athletic. Team defeated Pirates on Friday night, scheduled to host them again at 6:10 p.m. ET on Saturday. Status of that game not yet known.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) August 15, 2020

Passan indicated postponement of the Reds-Pirates game tonight is likely. 

Saturday’s game between the Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates is likely to be postponed after a Reds player tested positive for COVID-19, sources tell ESPN.

The fallout is unclear — will be for days. But after the Marlins and Cardinals outbreaks, avoiding another is vital.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) August 15, 2020

As of 10 AM, there has been no confirmation or announcement from MLB or the Reds.

If the reporting is accurate, we hope for the best for the health of that player and his family and friends. 

Possible further virus spread

The player who has tested positive will be quarantined and receive any needed health care. The next step is to figure out if other Reds players, coaches or personnel are infected. Add to that list the Pirates, who have played at GABP the past two nights, and the Kansas City Royals, who were in town to play the Reds on Tuesday and Wednesday. 

The challenge comes with the lagged nature of the league’s testing regime. Baseball tests are run every-other day and shipped to a special facility in Utah for results. That process has been taking 36-48 hours between test and notification. That means if the Reds learned of the positive test result late last night (Friday), the test itself was likely taken on Thursday morning. The player would have been positive as early as then.  

Further, if that player’s last negative test was taken on Tuesday morning, then all anyone would know is that he became positive sometime after that. Presumably this player has been around other Reds players and personnel a lot since Tuesday. Even if that player has had no symptoms, he can still spread the virus to others before he quarantines. That delay is what presents the substantial risk of additional positive tests on the team. 

The incubation period — the time between exposure to the virus and symptom onset — has varied from three to 14 days, although 4-5 days is typical. That means Reds players who were exposed to the positive player in the past few days may not know for nearly two weeks whether they themselves are positive. 

With earlier MLB outbreaks, the number of positive results from players, coaches and personnel grew as time passed. With the Marlins, the initial outbreak was four players, but eventually spread to 21 over the course of a week. Their opponents, the Phillies, also had several positive tests among members of their clubhouse staff who hosted the Marlins. 

The Cardinals learned of their first four positive test results on Thursday, July 30. Since then, they have had a total of 18 people test positive, the most recent being two days ago. The last game they played was on Wednesday, July 29. They are scheduled to play later today after a 16-day layoff. 

Scheduling

You’d have to expect the games tonight and tomorrow against the Pirates to be canceled. The Reds are off Monday anyhow and scheduled to play in Kansas City on Tuesday. 

But it’s hard to know what to expect from MLB in terms of scheduling. Baseball has been taking a crash course in learning how to manage COVID-19. Each situation is different. I hesitate to use the word “protocol” with anything they’ve done so far. Protocol implies procedures and rules that are followed. But MLB has been tweaking its response each time. [This is understandable and a smart thing.] MLB may treat a situation where only one player has tested positive differently than when multiple players have. Each situation creates its own new “protocol.” 

In previous situations — where multiple players or coaches from an organization had tested positive — games were postponed. The idea is to wait and play until the league is convinced all the positive cases have been detected. The Cardinals have only played five games in 2020. The Reds have played 20. 

In reaction to the outbreaks on the Marlins and Cardinals, MLB hired monitors for each team’s clubhouse and hotel to make sure its guidelines were being followed, They also sent new, severe warnings to all clubs, threatening to suspend players or staff members for violations, including the possibility of suspension for the remainder of the season for repeated or serious violations. Cleveland put two of its starting pitchers on MLB’s restricted list for leaving the team hotel while on the road. Those players have now been activated but demoted to Cleveland’s ATS.

Analysis

Obviously this is bad news. First and foremost there are the health risks for the player involved and his family, friends and teammates.

If you’re looking for a silver lining, only one Reds player or staff member has tested positive so far. Maybe, just maybe, the spread will be contained to that one person. With the Marlins and Cardinals, multiple people tested positive at the start. It was believed in each case that they were exposed together in a night club or casino. The Reds case might turn out to be different if the initial exposure was just to one person and that person has been careful since.

But we also need to be prepared for further transmission among the team and what that means for additional health risks and game postponement. While the risk of spread is believed to be much less outdoors, it’s obvious watching players interact on the field and in the dugout on a daily basis that they aren’t able to maintain best practices for virus control. Again, it’s understandable these habits of a lifetime are hard to break. The prolonged stretch of positive tests on other teams is reason to be concerned. 

Up to now, baseball’s most successful defense against keeping COVID-19 suppressed was to keep it off of teams entirely. Prior to this reported positive test on the Reds, MLB had gone two weeks with no positive tests other than for the Cardinals. But when the virus has breached the clubhouse doors, it often hasn’t stopped with its first host. Now the virus has apparently found its way into the Reds home. All we can do is hope for the best.

This will be a rapidly developing story. Check back here for future developments.