Report: Second Yankees’ MiLB player tests positive for coronavirus

By Matt Johnson

·Updated: March 17, 2020

The New York Yankees informer their players on Tuesday that a second MiLB player has tested positive for the coronavirus, per ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

The New York Yankees have informed their minor league players that another minor leaguer in the organization has tested positive for coronavirus, sources familiar with the message distributed to players tell ESPN.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) March 17, 2020

The news comes just two days after it was reported that another Yankees’ minor-league player became the first known player in baseball to test positive for the coronavirus.

MLB and MILB announced the indefinite suspensions of the 2020 season on March 12 as a matter of precaution to avoid a potential spread of the coronavirus. The decision came after Utah Jazz teammates Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell tested positive for COVID-19, which forced the NBA to suspend operations indefinitely. Since that time, Detroit Pistons center Christian Wood has tested positive for the coronavirus.

While Yankees players wanted to stay together at the team’s facilities during the MLB shutdown, MLB ultimately announced that players must leave the facilities. As we’ve now seen with two minor-league players testing positive, who were at the same facility, the league’s precaution was necessary.

According to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University, more than 5,000 people in the United States have tested positive for the coronavirus and there are now nearly 200,000 confirmed cases globally.