COVID-19 tests remind Crew 'nobody's immune'

Urías, Perdomo (asymptomatic) received news before Summer Camp

July 6th, 2020

MILWAUKEE -- The Brewers had their first publicly confirmed cases of COVID-19 with Monday’s announcement that infielder Luis Urías and pitcher Angel Perdomo had been entered into league protocols after testing positive prior to intake last week.

Both players are asymptomatic, Brewers manager Craig Counsell said, and consented to their names being made public by the team.

Because their positive tests came before the start of Summer Camp, neither player was part of the Brewers’ first two workouts at Miller Park over the weekend. They won’t be cleared to report until they remain symptom-free and test negative twice at least 24 hours apart.

“You don’t know how long the virus is going to be in your system, it’s different for everybody, so there’s really no [timetable],” Counsell said. “I think it’s pretty safe to assume it’s going to be a minimum of 10 days, but that’s a guess, is what I’d tell you.”

For Urías, it’s another significant setback in his bid to compete with Orlando Arcia for starting shortstop duties. Urías was sidelined in Spring Training after undergoing surgery for a fractured hamate bone in his left hand. For Perdomo, who split last season between Double-A Biloxi and Triple-A San Antonio, it will cost him chances to make an impression in a bid for an in-season callup.

Counsell, however, said the club expects both players to contribute at the Major League level in 2020.

The positives offered a reminder of why the Brewers and other teams have gone to such lengths to install procedures to impede the spread of the coronavirus, from every-other-day testing to spacing in indoor spaces -- position players are in the home clubhouse at Miller Park, pitchers are using the visitor's clubhouse -- to staging two workouts each day in an effort to limit the number of individuals on hand at any given time.

On the field, coaches and athletic training personnel wear masks, and players have been encouraged to mind their distancing.

“Nobody’s safe from this. Nobody’s immune to this,” Ryan Braun said. “It doesn’t matter -- age, race, religion -- nobody is immune to this thing, and I think there are constant reminders when you see the amount of big-name athletes that have tested positive, and then you hear some of their stories where some guys have caught a bad version of the virus. So I do think it’s a constant reminder to take every precaution for everybody out there to try to keep everybody as safe and healthy as possible so we can deal with this thing the best that we possibly can.”

Added Counsell: “We’re learning as we go, trying to get into a normalcy with it, of how to spread out. We’ll get better at it. We can improve every day still.”

So far, Counsell said the Brewers’ experience with MLB’s testing program has been “very good.” Christian Yelich said players spit into a test tube before it's sent off for analysis; they are not subject to the deep nasal swabs that are required for another kind of COVID-19 test.

“We lucked out on that,” Yelich said.

Added Counsell: “So far, so good for our team. There’s a lot of hard work that goes into the logistics of setting this up, so I think [medical director] Roger Caplinger is the man for the Brewers who is doing a lot of this work, and he’s done a nice job of making this seamless and a fairly simple process right now. There’s going to be snags in this, I think we all know that. But I’m pleased with how it’s gone so far.”

The Brewers are not the only team navigating these issues, and Major League Baseball is not the only entity working through problems as they arise. On Sunday, while the Brewers staged their second day of camp at Miller Park, the nearby Milwaukee Milkmen, an independent professional team based in neighboring Franklin, Wis., cancelled a game due to a positive test for COVID-19. And the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks closed their training facility after receiving coronavirus test results.

“It's definitely in the back of everyone's mind,” said left-hander Brent Suter, the Brewers’ representative to the MLB Players Association. “Seeing the Bucks' news yesterday, we were all obviously bummed for them. Hopefully they can get everything going in Orlando when the time comes. We're in the same town so it’s all the more [a] reminder to distance ourselves from people we don't know, keep in small groups and to wear our mask. This thing is real and it's right around here. We have to keep being smart.”

That’s the message Counsell has repeatedly passed to players.

“The best thing we can say is we're just doing our best every day to do the right thing by our players and keep everybody safe,” Counsell said. “[Brewers president of baseball operations] David [Stearns] and I talked yesterday. I'm not spending much time right now looking at the season because we have workouts to organize right now, we have to make sure we're keeping our players safe, spreading them out, get used to and understand how we all have to operate together. Right now, the season isn't on my radar yet. This is on my radar because keeping everybody healthy and safe and doing the best we can at that job is taking up the bulk of our time -- and it should.

“On the field, I think it feels really normal for the players. They're doing their jobs and doing what they love to do. Everything else, we have to make sure we're doing the best we can to keep them safe, because that's what's going to make a fun, productive season.”