Pirates' Shelton: Altoona camp more affected than Pirates for returns on covid-19 test results

MLB dealt with delays in covid-19 testing and results over the holiday weekend that caused the Oakland A’s to cancel their workout on Sunday and the Washington Nationals to follow suit on Monday, but manager Derek Shelton said the Pittsburgh Pirates “have not had that issue.”

Shelton said testing delays have postponed the start of training camp for the 20 players at the team’s alternate training site, Peoples Natural Gas Field, home of their Double-A affiliate, the Altoona Curve.

“I think Altoona has probably been affected there more than we have been affected here,” Shelton said Monday afternoon. “We’re still awaiting on their results there. And we still have a couple pending here. I think as we’ve seen, there’s been teams blanket across (MLB). We have not had that issue. … Fortunately, with our big-league club, with the exception of a couple people we’ve had, our results have been pretty rapid in terms of getting back.”

Shelton said the Pirates have 35 or 36 players out of 40 available for workouts at PNC Park, adding that he’s not permitted to divulge more specifics. Two Pirates players, outfielder Socrates Brito and relief pitcher Blake Cederlind, allowed the team to share that they tested positive for the coronavirus.

Nevertheless, Shelton remains hopeful MLB can play a 60-game season this summer.

“I’m an optimistic person,” Shelton said. “I’m staying optimistic but I’m also staying day to day. … Every day is a day of adjustments, regardless of what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. I think we have to look at that, not only as the Pirates, but I think we have to look at that industry wide. To make a negative connotation of anything, we’re going to have things that don’t go as well as we wanted here and throughout the league. And there’s going to be things that go really well that we didn’t think about. The big thing is, we have to have the ability to adjust, not only here in Pittsburgh but in every single market and the league. As long as we continue to learn that, I’m going to stay optimistic about how we’re going to go about it.”