In the summer where the hits keep on coming, Miguel Sano became the fourth Minnesota Twins player to test positive for COVID-19.
Players getting COVID-19 was to be expected during the 2020 MLB season, but I don’t think anyone would have thought the Minnesota Twins would be hit this hard and this fast. The team announced earlier today that slugger Miguel Sano has COVID-19:
Miguel Sano tested positive for COVID-19 and has been quarantined away from the team, the Twins announced.
— Aaron Gleeman (@AaronGleeman) July 4, 2020
He'll need to test negative twice before being allowed back into camp.
Sano is now the fourth player on the Twins’ 60-Man Roster to test positive for the disease. Willians Astudillo tested positive on July 3rd and has been symptom free to this point, giving hope that La Tortuga will be good to go by the start of the season.
The other two players, Nick Gordon and Edwar Colina both tested positive before coming into camp, so each player is already in quarantine. Gordon is on the 40-Man Roster, while Colina is just in the 60-Man group.
Losing Gordon and Astudillo for any part of the beginning of the season wouldn’t be good, as both are expected to be key role players this year. The hope for Sano is that he remains asymptomatic and will be ready to go when the season resumes towards the end of July.
Having Sano out for any period of time would be almost disastrous for the Twins. as he has been an excellent run producer during his five seasons as a member of the Minnesota Twins. He’s expected to be the Twins’ primary first baseman this year after moving over from third to make room for Josh Donaldson.
On the bright side, none of the four players have been in contact with other Twins players, and they were the only four on the sixty-man roster that have tested positive and weren’t allowed into camp.
Every single other Twins player was allowed in for practices at Target Field, and the only other two missing were Byron Buxton and Cody Stashak. Buxton and Stashak each were on the paternity list, as Buxton welcomed his second child, while Stashak welcomed his first.