For the first time, the Cubs are navigating the contact tracing, player isolation, and ramped up COVID-19 testing that many teams across the league had to turn to last season.
On Monday, the Cubs announced bullpen coach Chris Young had tested positive for COVID-19. The club has also placed relief pitchers Jason Adam, Dan Winkler and Brandon Workman on the COVID-19 related injured list.
Those announcements came less than a week after Cubs first base coach Craig Driver tested positive for COVID-19.
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“You're worried about the health and wellbeing of others,” Cubs manager David Ross said of the past week. “It hits home every time my phone rings and it’s one of the docs or the trainers or Jed (Hoyer, Cubs president of baseball operations.) Your heart sinks.”
Ross said Monday’s game at Milwaukee is not in jeopardy. All members of the Cubs traveling party in Milwaukee tested negative for COVID-19 on Monday.
To reinforce the bullpen, the Cubs recalled left-handed pitchers Justin Steele and Brad Wieck from the South Bend alternate training site and selected right-hander Pedro Strop as a replacement player.
“There's always that kind of underlying, ‘How big is this?’” Ross said when asked if he was concerned about further spread. “We are in our own little world here, and we try to stay in our own little bubble. So, yeah there's concern for sure, but the guys have been pretty diligent about wearing their masks. I think the way things have shaken out right now, they've made some sense.
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“We're hoping for the best, but we also plan for the worst. You have to have that mindset in this time we're in right now.”
The Cubs made it through last season without a major league player testing positive for COVID-19. In spring training this year, a player in Cubs minor league camp tested positive, but contact tracing and COVID-19 testing suggested it was an isolated incident.
Driver, who tested positive for COVID-19 last week, hadn’t traveled with the team to Pittsburgh. The Cubs began testing daily. All of the traveling party’s tests on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday came back negative, and on Saturday, the team expressed cautious optimism that they had avoided the spread of the virus.
It’s unknown when Young was exposed to the virus, but according to the Centers for Disease Control and prevention, the incubation period for COVID-19 is thought to extend to up to 14 days.
Young did travel on the team plane from Pittsburgh to Chicago on Sunday night, after the traveling party twice tested negative for COVID-19, Ross said.
Adam, Winkler and Workman have been isolated away from the team and remain in Chicago. The Cubs drove from Chicago to Milwaukee on Monday morning.