Jon Heyman of MLB Network reports that Marlins shortstop Miguel Rojas has tested positive for COVID-19.
Rojas, you’ll recall, was the one credited/blamed — depending on your point of view — for making the call, as the team’s defacto leader, for the Marlins to play on Sunday despite the team suffering multiple COVID-19 infections. Which was, actually, a pretty lousy position for Rojas to even be in if we’re being honest. If Major League Baseball was leading on all of this instead of merely reacting and improvising, the individual players would never be in the position to be making such decisions. In light of that, the fact that Rojas, and to a lesser extent manager Don Mattingly, have been scapegoated for Sunday’s game being played is unfair to them.
Whatever the case, losing Rojas would normally hurt the Marlins given that (a) he is, in fact, the team’s leader; and (b) he has started the season 7-for-10 with a homer and five driven in in only three games. The Marlins, however, may not be playing games for some time, however, and it’s quite possible that he’ll go through multiple rounds of COVID testing and come out clean on the other side before his club even takes the field.
