Two Cincinnati Reds test positive for COVID-19

The inevitable has become the unfortunate.

We have already seen COVID-19 mini-outbreaks at Major League Baseball team facilities in Florida, impacting both the Philadelphia Phillies and Toronto Blue Jays. The Arizona Diamondbacks had multiple folks test positive, as have the Colorado Rockies, Seattle Mariners, San Francisco Giants, New York Mets, Los Angeles Angels, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Chicago Cubs.

If that read as if I was just naming every team there is, well, that’s pretty much the point. This virus is going to continue to infiltrate pretty much every aspect of our society at this rate, and with baseball actively trying to open up in the midst of it, positive tests are pretty much inevitable for every single franchise out there.

The Cincinnati Reds are no different, and today it was revealed that a pair of Reds players have tested positive, per MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon.

As that tweet suggests, the names of the two players were not revealed. That said, it’s going become pretty apparent to anyone who can add 2 to 2 and get 4 which players this virus is impacting, something made obvious by the Phillies earlier today with a quick glance at their transactions. Unannounced IL moves due to ‘undisclosed ailments’ is certainly nebulous in and of itself, but given that almost every single IL placement comes with a specific reason (as Jarrett Seidler of Baseball Prospectus pointed out), not saying anything is pretty much saying everything.

The first official Reds workout is set for tomorrow (Friday), at which point it will probably begin to be clear which players this awful virus has impacted. I’m not even saying that as if I’m looking to be some P.I., either - just that it’s going to be very easy to look around and notice which players aren’t around at the moment.

Also, it’s less an attempt to put together an easy puzzle at this point of the season and more an exercise in preparing for it to happen once, twice, five times again to various players all throughout the process of playing a 60-game regular season in the midst of a pandemic. This is news itself, yes, but this is also just establishing the protocols for when we’re inevitably going to relay similar information down the road, since at this juncture I’m convinced we’ll see this pop up over and over again.

Neither of the two are in Cincinnati, as relayed earlier in Sheldon’s tweet, and I hope they’re quarantined and recovering without pain or impediment. This new normal is just brutal.