There were rumors earlier today that if the Cincinnati Reds had further negative tests on Sunday that they would play a doubleheader on Monday against the Pittsburgh Pirates to make up the two games that were postponed on Saturday and Sunday due to a Reds player testing positive for COVID-19. That, however, has been decided that it won’t happen. Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette appears to be the first to report that the doubleheader would not be happening on Monday.
Pirates will not play a doubleheader Monday in Cincinnati. Not yet clear why.
— Jason Mackey (@JMackeyPG) August 16, 2020
About thirty minutes after that, Mackey reported that the doubleheader was off, again, but with information from the Pirates manager Derek Shelton.
“Major League Baseball has decided protocol-wise that they did not want us to play Monday,” Shelton said on a Zoom call with local reporters. “What goes into that decision happens a lot higher than me. They just informed us that we’re not going to play Monday, and we’ll reschedule.”
Bobby Nightengale of The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that no additional positive tests came from the Reds on Saturday, clarifying the report from Jon Heyman in the morning that “all players tested yesterday were negative, boding well for their return next week” which left open a lot of weird potential given the wording used.
No additional positives is good news, but it’s also not news that tells us a ton, either. As we’ve seen with both the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals, it can take over a week after the initial player testing positive and the team “shutting things down” before others on the team stop testing positive. The Cardinals, for example, hadn’t played a game in the month of August until Saturday, but had a coach test positive on Thursday, nearly two full weeks later. It’s certainly possible he had caught the virus elsewhere after things were shut down, but he was known to be around the team that ultimately had an outbreak, too.
There is no word at this point as to when the team will play next. What we do know is that Major League Baseball and the Reds are going to continue testing the players, and monitoring the results. Their next scheduled game is on Tuesday against the Kansas City Royals. If the Reds were to return to play that game, it would be, by far, the quickest turnaround time for any team that has had to sit out due to a positive test thus far – and quicker than the Philadelphia Phillies returned after their series against the Marlins was wiped out and they had to continue waiting and testing negative before they were able to return to the field a full week later.
Tuesday sounds promising. Doug, do you think the Reds will adjust their rotation to save the better arms for St. Louis?
I don’t know that Tuesday sounds promising at all. In fact, if you were to somehow force me to place the entirety of my checking account on whether they play Tuesday or not, I’d place my bet on not. We have not seen a team turn around that quickly yet – granted there have only been a few examples, but even the Phillies who had no positive tests, took a week to get back on the field.
why was senzel so upset after the last game?
It’s looking like a long week for us as fans …
And we get to watch the Cards sprint over the Reds while we sit. Down to 4th place in the division….only 1 game out though
Second place finish is an automatic playoff spot, that’s what we have to watch for, not to leave out the cubs lost 3 straight so maybe the teams with the best depth like the reds can make a run here in the next 20 games
The White Sox today hit back-to-back-to-back-to-back home runs vs. the Cardinals pitching. Could be catching the Cardinals at a good time. Hope those games are not postponed. The Cardinals have to play something like 42 games in the next 33 days. It will be a very last resort if they postpone any with the Reds starting on Thursday. The weather in the heartland might be a different story though. There were a lot of thunderstorms this past week and there is 100 + degree heat out west slowly heading east.
If the Reds can take 3 of 4 games in STL it will.be a major achievement.
If they take 3 of 4 from anyone it will be a major achievement
Been not a dry out west (here in CO),
Pueblo has had 100 degree days, bot not here in Monument.
Do not know about the rain, we have not see much in a while.
Hope to see the games vs the CARDS.
Note, not all teams will play 60 games this year. Doubt the CARDS do.
Miles Mikolas is out for the year that’s got to catch up w them at some point
The question is, are we going to be playing on Tuesday? That’s all we need to know because the flow of games played will continue from there
I’m guessing that we won’t know that until some point on Monday evening at the earliest. But, that’s also just me guessing.
Continuing the conversation from the previous article my point is that cancelling games based on a positive antigen test is as arbitrary as cancelling games if a player coughs or sneezes. These antigen tests are just a small piece of the puzzle in determining if a player has the disease or not. The positive predictive value in a positive test in a player who is asymptomatic is very low, basically 50 percent. Now if he has symptoms and a positive test it drive the ppv up to 95 percent which is much better.
I just think if we continue to use random antigen testing alone to determine if games can be played we are not going to get very far. These tests should be used for what they were designed to do. Aid in the diagnosis of the disease. They are not the end all be all.
Somebody was positive, but then everyone was negative so lets make 50 people pass 2-3 more tests and then we’ll cancel baseball for a week anyway. Welcome to 2020
We’ve had atleast 8-10 positives at my job. A hazmat team comes out and sprays some chemicals and if your temperature is under 100.4 then you go back to work. Cmon already? This is ridiculous
It can take more than a week to test positive after exposure. Getting back negative tests a day after someone tested positive does not at all mean that the virus did spread to others. That’s why they are waiting. It’s not ridiculous at all. It’s actively trying to reduce the chances of an outbreak occurring.
Looks like Friday for 2 against Cards then IF tests continue negative.
That’s assuming that the first test wasn’t a false positive in the first place…….
The Reds and MLB do not believe the first positive (from Thursday’s tests) was a false positive, according to Bobby Nightengale. He didn’t specify that the player had tested positive again, but did note that there were “no additional” positive tests and that the team does not believe the player’s positive test isn’t believed to be a false positive. That report came after we knew the test results from Saturday morning’s tests, too, which presumably would have included the player that tested positive on Thursday’s tests.