The Boston Red Sox roster took another blow during Tuesday’s game against the Tampa Bay Rays, when Xander Bogaerts was removed from play following a positive test for COVID-19.
His result made him the 10th member of the organization currently affected by the virus. As for the members of the team that are untouched by the outbreak, just because they’re remaining healthy doesn’t mean they’re not concerned.
In his postgame press conference following Tuesday’s 8-5 loss, Kyle Schwarber opened up about the mentality of the club amid the outbreak.
“It’s unfortunate,” he said. “I think the biggest concern is just the health of the individuals. This is no joke. It’s nothing to not take serious. You just hope that it’s a light case, anything like that, that they’re not feeling it super hard and that they recover quickly. That’s kind of the biggest thing that’s on everyone’s mind is the well-being of all the guys.
“It’s the invisible enemy. It sucks but we have to keep moving forward and keep putting our best foot forward. We’re in the middle of this thing and it’s the next man up mentality right now. We’ve just got to keep moving forward.”
As of Tuesday night, six players (Kiké Hernández, Christian Arroyo, MartÃn Pérez, Matt Barnes and Hirokazu Sawamura) and two coaches (Kiyoshi Momose and Ramón Vázquez) tested positive for the virus. Reliever Josh Taylor and first base coach Tom Goodwin were deemed close contacts.
Both Schwarber and Red Sox manager Alex Cora spoke about the impact Bogaerts has on the team, with Cora calling him “the leader of the team.” But the manager did leave things on a bit of a cliffhanger, as he said there were no new close contacts at that point but he was prepared to go through the same “fire drill” on Wednesday.
Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
