Freddie Freeman, Will Smith, Touki Toussaint, and Pete Kozma all test positive for COVID-19

Lets be very clear here: it was all but inevitable that the Braves were going to have to deal directly with the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that these guys are public personalities in conjunction with being around other players, coaches, and media types quite a bit, it would have taken close to a miracle for the team to not have at least one case on the team during the 2020 season. Hell, we don’t truly know if there hadn’t been cases previously in the organization that just weren’t reported because the shutdown rendered the point moot.

That being said, having one of your best players, one of your biggest free agent acquisitions, and two other players test positive for COVID-19 within the first couple days of training camp starting back up is not ideal.

The top billing of this group goes to Freddie Freeman who not only tested positive, but is also experiencing symptoms. Snitker was very clear in his call that it will be a bit before we see Freddie back at camp while the others appear to be asymptomatic cases. Each player is going to be evaluated on a case by case basis as to when they can return with the most important requirement being that they have two negative test results within a 24 hour period before they are cleared to return.

On the call, Snitker was also quick to note that in Freddie’s case, he did not come into contact with anyone else on the team. This is definitely good news and we wish him well on his recovery. However, with four cases on the team already, one does begin to worry that there could be more on the horizon.