The Washington Nationals’ game Thursday night against the New York Yankees may have marked the return of baseball after the coronavirus pandemic ground sports to a halt, but COVID-19 still hangs over the sports world as it tries to find its way back to normal.
Less than five hours before the first game of the 2020 Major League Baseball season, the Washington Nationals announced that star outfielder Juan Soto would not play after testing positive for COVID-19.
General manager and president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo said Soto’s most recent test was two days ago and the result came in early Thursday morning.
Soto was around the team in recent days as his previous tests came back negative; he even played in an exhibition game Tuesday against the Baltimore Orioles. But Rizzo said no other Nationals players were unavailable and no one else tested positive.
“This is part of preparation for baseball in 2020,” Rizzo said. “We’re going to have to learn how to adjust to these things, and I think that the team that really does the best job of keeping their star players on the field and keeping them healthy has got a better chance of winning than the other teams.”
Rizzo added that Soto is asymptomatic and the team is following MLB protocol. Soto will need to test negative for the virus twice, 24 hours apart, to be eligible to play again.
“What can you do about it? You’ve got to move on and you’ve got to play well,” Rizzo said. “They’re going to play this game tonight, with or without Juan Soto. We’ve got to find the best way to kinda channel our energies and players have to step up and we’re gonna have to win without our best guy.”
Manager Dave Martinez said the news of Soto’s positive test hit him and the team hard. His level of concern will be raised now, he said, until the next round of test results comes back and shows everyone negative for the virus.
“It could have been any one of our guys,” Martinez said. “It’s bothersome, and then reality sets in that, hey, we’re in the midst of a pandemic and we just gotta be awfully careful now throughout everything.”
Soto, 21, missed much of Washington’s summer training period., with reports saying because he had to spend a brief amount of time in quarantine after coming in contact with a teammate with the coronavirus.
Now, he joins a list of star athletes who recently have tested positive for COVID-19 while preparing to resume playing, including the Atlanta Braves’ Freddie Freeman and the Houston Rockets’ Russell Westbrook.
Soto figures to be the Nationals’ cleanup hitter and future face of the franchise after his strong first two seasons in the majors. In 2019, Soto was paired with the now-departed Anthony Rendon in the middle of the lineup and recorded 110 RBI, 108 walks and a .548 slugging percentage.
Veteran journeyman Emilio Bonifacio took Soto’s presumed spot on the Nationals’ initial 30-man roster, and Andrew Stevenson started in left field in Soto’s place.
• Adam Zielonka can be reached at azielonka@washingtontimes.com.
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