Urías, Perdomo positive for COVID
Luis Urías cannot catch a break. Urías, who missed much of the Milwaukee Brewers’ spring camp while recovering from hand surgery, is being withheld from the team’s early workouts after testing positive for COVID-19 before players reported to Miller Park last week.
Manager Craig Counsell revealed Monday morning that Urías and lefthander Angel Perdomo were in the COVID-19 isolation protocol. The Brewers had no positives during intake testing of players and staff last week, an encouraging development as camp began.
Urías, 23, was acquired by the Brewers in the offseason with left-hander Eric Lauer from the San Diego Padres in exchange for outfielder Trent Clark and right-hander Zach Davies. He was held out during spring training in Phoenix while recovering from surgery for a broken hamate bone in his left hand and was poised to see his first Cactus League action on the day the pandemic forced a halt to baseball.
The Brewers have high hopes for Urías, who gives them not only depth up the middle but also a viable candidate to push the erratic Orlando Arcia at shortstop.
“He hasn’t had the best fortune, for sure, but these are only temporary setbacks and that’s how he has to approach them,” Counsell said. “He’ll be back shortly. Because he’s asymptomatic, we’re pretty confident that he’ll get through this.
“He hasn’t had at-bats for awhile so the baseball part will probably take a bit, but this is a temporary setback. That’s how he has to approach it. As soon as he’s back to 100% healthy and he gets some time on the field, his talents will shine.”
Perdomo, 26, turned heads in spring training by striking out 10 batters while allowing just one hit over four innings (four appearances) and appeared to have a good chance to make his majorleague debut this season. Counsell said Urías and Perdomo are not being counted out for 2020.
“We’ll see them in camp,” Counsell said. “They’ll be here in camp, for sure, and they’ll both contribute to our majorleague roster this year.”
To return, players must test negative two straight times, at least 24 hours apart. Thus, there’s no real timetable for an isolated player’s return, leaving some guesswork.
“You don’t know how long the virus is going to be in your system, it’s different for everybody, so there’s really no (timetable),” Counsell said. “I think it’s pretty safe to assume it’s going to be a minimum of 10 days, but that’s a guess, is what I’d tell you.”
With the news that the Milwaukee
Bucks shut their practice facility Sunday due to COVID-19 concerns and the Milwaukee Milkmen canceled their local game that day after a player tested positive, Counsell addressed the ongoing concern about player and staff safety.
“The best thing we can say is we’re just doing our best every day to do the right thing by our players and keep everybody safe,” he said. “(President of baseball operations) David (Stearns) and I talked yesterday. I’m not spending much time right now looking at the season because we have workouts to organize right now, we have to make sure we’re keeping our players safe, spreading them out, get used to and understand how we all have to operate together.”
Testing going well
Reports surfaced Monday that some teams, including Houston, Washington and Oakland, were having to cancel workouts because results had not come back from COVID-19 testing Friday. The Brewers had intake testing done Wednesday and got the results in time to begin workouts as scheduled Saturday.
“Our experience with the testing has been very good,” Counsell said. “Today is our third day of testing. It’s our fifth day at the park. We had intake testing and then it’s our third day of workouts. We’re really on schedule every other day; so far so good for our team.
“There’s a lot of hard work that goes into the logistics of setting this up, so I think (Brewers medical director) Roger Caplinger is the man for the Brewers who is doing a lot of this work, and he’s done a nice job of making this seamless and a fairly simple process right now. There’s going to be snags in this, I think we all know that. But I’m pleased with how it’s gone so far, and I would encourage you to ask the players as well.”
As for the diligence of honoring the MLB protocols for safety, Counsell said, “Yeah, we all need reminders. I think that’s the big thing. It’s not only that we tried to space out players through the schedule, but we also need reminders, and we all have to give each other reminders.
“That’s going to be true across the league. There are spots in the day that I see our players that we need to get a little better at, for sure. And we can. Then there are places that we need to constantly remind ourselves to be cautious. We’re learning as we go. Trying to get into a normalcy with it, of how to spread out. We’ll get better at it. We can improve every day still.”
Surprise Zoom session
Counsell and his players are doing all media interviews via Zoom sessions, with no face-to-face interaction permissible. As a surprise during the initial workouts, Counsell had Zoom links made to most of the players’ spouses and children on the Miller Park video board so they could interact in real time, on the job.
Seeing their families’ faces on the video board was a big hit, which pleased Counsell.
“I just thought it would be,” he said. “I had some help from, a bunch of the wives helped me out, kind of gathering all the emails quickly. And our scoreboard people did a great job in just putting together the call and kind of the technical part of it.
“When we went to them, they were live, and all the families waved. It didn’t go perfect because the audio was a little shaky. I wanted all the kids to scream at the end for their dads. The audio was a little dicey when we patched in 45 people on the Miller Park sound system. But it was cool, because they were live.
“It was great. They were moving around, and it was live. They were waving at the start. They were all waving to their dads. So it was really cool. The players, I think it hit home for all of us, for sure.
“The purpose of the call was to really highlight not only are we as a team connected, all of our families are part of this as well, and more than ever before, we are all making sacrifices together, right? Everybody on that scoreboard is part of this group right now, and we’re going to ask them to make sacrifices as well.”
Time for games, sort of
The Brewers have been working out each day in two shifts, allowing for social distancing and having just one baseball diamond. But, with only three weeks to get ready for the season, they will move forward to game-style action Wednesday.
“We’ll start doing what I’ll call a ‘situational intrasquad game,’ “Counsell said. “We’ll play five innings on Wednesday -- it’s really dependent on our pitching how many innings we play. We’ll play it true but we’ll also mix it up a little, starting some innings with baserunners on so everybody can get some appropriate work in. It’ll be controlled.
“The first five games we’ll play will be more controlled. Then, we’ll try to play some more competitive games at the end, more straight games without modifications.”