SEATTLE — This is worse than being no-hit and the potential ramifications are yet to be known.
On Friday afternoon, roughly seven hours before their game vs. the Padres at Petco Park, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that at least one Mariners player in the team’s traveling part had tested positive for COVID-19.
MLB sources confirmed the report the that Mariners have at least one player that has tested positive for COVID-19 with the possibility of a second player.
The Mariners were still gathering information and going through protocols of contact tracing. Players who are not vaccinated and contact traced to the player with the positive test will have to quarantine anywhere from 7-10 days regardless of testing negative. Players who are fully vaccinated and contact traced will not have to quarantine if they are asymptomatic.
A week ago, Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto lamented the fact that the Mariners were nowhere close to reaching the 85% threshold of Tier 1 employees — players, coaches, training staff and support staff — being fully vaccinated for COVID-19, which would reduce the stringent protocols set by MLB, including mandatory quarantine for nonvaccinated players who are contact traced.
It wasn’t a warning or prediction but an exasperated admittance to the inevitable.
Dipoto had watched the Nationals, Astros, Padres and Yankees lose multiple players for long stretches and lose games because of their absence. Meanwhile, the Mariners had just one player — Anthony Misiewicz — miss time on for a COVID-19-related absence.
“It seems impossible that we’ve been able to avoid it for this long,” he said.
Per an agreement with MLB and the MLBPA, teams can’t force players to get COVID-19 vaccinations. They also can’t openly discuss which players have opted to get vaccinated. Per sources, less than half the Mariners players on the active roster and injured list opted to get vaccinated when first offered by the team in mid-April. The number has increased with changes to the roster, including call-ups from Triple-A Tacoma, who were all vaccinated. Still, the Mariners aren’t close to reaching 85%.
“Obviously, that’s disappointing from a health and wellness perspective,” he said. “And there’s some ominous hangover from a competitive standpoint, but it’s the decision of the individual, and while I can be disappointed and hope that time solves that, there’s not a lot I can do other than express that we are doing very well as an organization, which is lagging behind with our big league club, and hopefully that resolves itself soon, because like has happened at other places around the game eventually it’s likely to crop up. It seems impossible that we’ve been able to avoid it for this long.”
