An unidentified Cincinnati Reds player has tested positive for COVID-19, reports The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal. The Reds defeated the Pirates on Friday night (CIN 8, PIT 1) and the two teams are scheduled to play again Saturday evening. ESPN's Jeff Passan says Saturday's game is likely to be postponed.
The Cardinals are scheduled to return to play Saturday after being shut down 16 days with a COVID-19 outbreak that included nine players and seven staff members testing positive. The St. Louis outbreak comes after the Marlins had 21 individuals test positive, including 18 players. Miami was shut down 11 days.
Based on their response to the Cardinals outbreak, MLB will hit pause on Cincinnati's season and begin contact tracing and additional testing to determine the extent of the outbreak. Players and personnel are tested every other day during the season as part of MLB's monitoring program. Additional protocols kick in following a positive test.
COVID-19 has an incubation period of up to 14 days with a median of five days, meaning a player who is exposed Monday may test negative Tuesday, and not test positive until his next test Thursday (or later). MLB created a COVID-19 injured list this year with no minimum or maximum stay. Players must test negative twice at least 24 hours apart to be activated, among other things.
On the second day of the regular season Reds infielder Matt Davidson tested positive for COVID-19 and was placed on the injured list. Mike Moustakas and Nick Senzel were isolated after exhibiting symptoms soon thereafter, and Joey Votto was isolated after self-reporting symptoms not long after that. All four players have since returned to action.
As part of their weekly testing update, MLB and the MLBPA jointly announced Friday that only four of the 12,031 tests taken this past week came back positive, and all four were previously known positives with the Cardinals. The Reds positive test is the first on a team other than the Cardinals and Marlins in at least two weeks.
At 9-11, the Reds are in third place in the NL Central and currently hold the second expanded postseason wild-card spot. The Cardinals have 11 doubleheaders scheduled the remainder of the season, which tells us MLB will try to make up any games the Reds miss later this year.
Although they are division rivals, the Cardinals and Reds have not played this season. St. Louis has played only five games because of its outbreak. All 30 MLB teams have not played on the same day since July 26.
