ANAHEIM, Calif. _ Weeks before MLB's health and safety protocols were implemented and players were subjected to near-daily coronavirus testing, Angels infielder Matt Thaiss became intimately familiar with nasal swabs and saliva tests.
Thaiss revealed Thursday in his first videoconference with reporters since arriving at Angels camp earlier this week that he was infected with COVID-19 for about a month. By the time he was cleared to join the team Sunday, he had missed nine workouts. Yet he had still had his saliva tested for traces of the coronavirus nearly a dozen times before arriving in Anaheim.
Thaiss found out June 17 that he had tested positive. He never developed symptoms but the virus lingered in his system for almost a month. He described the repetitive process of getting tested only to find out 24 hours later that he was still positive as "mentally defeating."
"I was asymptomatic the whole time, which was _ I was lucky," Thaiss said. "Very thankful that I was healthy. But at the same time, it's also a little frustrating when you know you feel perfectly fine but, for me, personally, it took me 20-something days of testing to test negative."
Thaiss first learned June 14 that a friend with whom he'd been working out had tested positive for COVID-19. He immediately went into isolation in his Arizona apartment, and remained there for roughly four weeks. There wasn't much for him to do to keep busy besides watch Bundesliga soccer _ he's a fan of Bayern Munich now _ and golf. His baseball activity was limited to miming swings in his mirror.
He watched helplessly from hundreds of miles away as his teammates reported to training camp and began intrasquad games.
"I was thankful I didn't have any symptoms, but I also thought that it was gonna be 14 days and boom, I'm ready July 1 to report to camp and hopefully have some sort of antibodies and be ready to go," he said. "The days just kept dragging on where it was July 7, July 8, where I was still in isolation. So that was tough."
Despite the time missed, Thaiss believes he will be ready to play when the season begins next week. He spent the months before testing positive for the virus working out in Arizona, getting his batting and fielding reps where he could and training at a gym. Now he's back to his normal routine, working with hitting coaches Jeremy Reed, John Mallee and Paul Sorrento and taking advantage of intrasquad games. He had about 10 at-bats in Tuesday's game, his first since rejoining the team.
The dry swings didn't help "prepare me for the blisters I was going to get when I came back," Thaiss joked.
"I'm feeling good," he said. "Feeling ready and excited get going."
