About 11 days ago, Anthony Rizzo started feeling off, and was unusually “tired and achy” after a game. Then he lost his sense of taste and smell, got a COVID test, and found out he was positive. It was barely a week after he’d been traded to the Yankees by the Cubs.
Rizzo, who has previously said that he was not vaccinated, unfortunately dealt with what sounds like a not-so-great case of the virus. He says it “knocked him out” for six or seven days, he was exhausted, with no appetite. The good news is that he says he’s feeling better, he’s back to work with the Yankees, and they are hopeful that he can keep increasing his work in the coming days and return thereafter.
Rizzo has been running, taking grounders, and could start taking batting practice. As long as he’s seeing pitches well and recovering between sessions physically, his manager, Aaron Boone, suggested Rizzo could return in the next day or two or three.
With the guys who have suffered through tougher, symptomatic COVID infections, the question is how performance will be impacted thereafter as the body fully recovers – the margins in MLB are so slim that being off just a bit can really make a huge difference. To that end, the timing is terrible for both the Yankees, who are on a hot streak and really positioning themselves well for a shot at the postseason, and for Rizzo, who is a free agent after the season and had also been on a hot streak prior to the illness. However much I might wish Rizzo had been vaccinated, I still wish him nothing but the best in the recovery. I think it sucks that he got so sick, and I hope it doesn’t impact him much going forward.
How this could impact Rizzo’s free agency, which is still something I think the Cubs will monitor closely, remains to be seen. It mostly depends on his performance coming back, I would expect, and if he shows that he’s no worse for the wear long-term, then the only health questions on Rizzo will be the ones that teams already had (age and back, mostly).