NEWSLETTER
It seems Jose Ramirez and Franmil Reyes were not alone in their extracurricular activities in violation of the COVID-19 health and safety protocols.
Unfortunately, Cubs reliever Pedro Strop was with them, too:
Strop was shown and tagged in a social media post (since deleted) by Franmil Reyes, who is also being held out of Cleveland camp (along with Jose Ramirez) for several days.
— Jordan Bastian (@MLBastian) March 7, 2021
Like I said with the Cleveland duo, you can understand the desire to live life at a human level, but the rules are in place for very good reasons. Violating them as Strop did can put other players and personnel in jeopardy. And if it happened later this month, it could also put parts of the regular season in jeopardy. You just can’t do it. And this is very disappointing.
It’s all the more disappointing given how beloved Strop is, and how he’s trying to win a job in the bullpen. This won’t help that cause, because he’ll now miss time, and it’s because he broke the rules that helped the Cubs be the only club in all of 2020 that didn’t have a single positive COVID-19 test starting with summer camp. Clearly the organization takes this stuff very seriously.
We’ll see what Strop says upon his return, and hopefully – at a health level – everything turns out fine on this.
The team’s gonna get a message in the meantime:
David Ross, who managed a Cubs team that didn’t have a player test positive for COVID-19 last season, will address the entire group again after Pedro Strop violated MLB’s health and safety protocols.
— Patrick Mooney (@PJ_Mooney) March 7, 2021
