Wilfredo Tovar becomes fifth Minnesota Twins player to test positive
By Otto Johnson
The Minnesota Twins have now had a fifth player test positive for COVID-19, meaning over eight percent of the roster has had the disease.
The Minnesota Twins are preparing for a season shortened by COVID-19, but by the looks of it they will still have to deal with several bumps in the road. A fifth player on the sixty man roster, infielder Wilfredo Tovar, has tested positive.
Tovar is a part of the Summer Camp group as a non-roster invitee who was practicing at the minor league site in St. Paul. Tovar tested negative when he entered camp, so it appears that he contracted it after already joining the team.
After contact tracing, the team confirmed that no other players tested positive, so it looks like it is just Tovar for the time being. He is asymptomatic, but will begin quarantine and will return once he has successfully tested negative twice.
Of all the players to get the coronavirus on the roster, Wilfredo Tovar is not the most concerning loss from a baseball standpoint. Tovar came over from the Los Angeles Angels on a minor league deal and has played in just forty MLB games, despite the fact that he is turning 29 next month.
Tovar has a career batting average of .188 with zero homers and just five RBI in addition to 15 strikeouts in 101 at bats. His biggest skill is defense, as his 0.5 career dWAR which is a really solid number for playing in just 257 innings.
The big concern here is Tovar marks the fifth Twins player to to test positive, which is roughly eight percent of the roster. That might not seem like much, but if that continues to rise it could cause problems for the Twins going forward.
On the plus side, Edwar Colina has successfully tested negative twice and will be returning to the Minnesota Twins soon. Miguel Sano, Willians Astudillo, and Nick Gordon are progressing through their quarantine and none of them appear to have dangerously worsening symptoms.
Hopefully Sano, Astudillo, Gordon, and Tovar get healthy soon so the team can have them back by the end of Summer camp. The Twins need all hands on deck (even the lesser known ones) if they want to repeat as American League Central champions (or more).