The Giants announced Tuesday afternoon that summer camp workouts at Oracle Park have been suspended, pending results from this weekend’s wave of COVID-19 testing (Twitter link via Kerry Crowley of the San Jose Mercury News). It seems the club has still not received results from Major League Baseball’s lab in Salt Lake City, Utah.
They’re not the first team to suspend or postpone workouts due to lags in the testing process. Both the Astros and Nationals called off Monday workouts for the same reason. In a statement on the matter, Nats GM Mike Rizzo offered particularly pointed criticism of the league’s testing inadequacies — apparently much to the chagrin of commissioner Rob Manfred. The cancellations by the Nats and Astros, as well as delays from clubs like the Angels and Athletics, led to broad criticism for the league, prompting Manfred’s office to issue a statement defending their testing procedures.
Notably, the league chalked up the delays to “unforeseen delays” due to the July 4 weekend and concluded that “we do not expect a recurrence.” Expected or not, it appears some kinks in the system still need to be ironed out.
The Giants have been able to get the results of some tests, as outfield prospect Hunter Bishop and minor-league righty Luis Madero are both known to have previously tested positive. However, MLB’s testing protocols call for tests to be performed every other day. To this point, collecting, shipping, testing and processing all of those samples in a timely fashion has proven difficult. The league and the MLBPA are in the process of searching for a second testing site, which could help to avoid further issues like the early ones we’ve seen so far.
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