Justin Turner's Positive COVID Test, Postgame Celebration With Team Raises Questions About MLB Protocols
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) -- The Dodgers won their seventh World Series and first since 1988 on Tuesday night but they did so without third baseman Justin Turner on the field for the final few innings after it was determined he had tested positive for COVID-19. Turner was supposed to go into isolation and remain there, but according to The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal, Turner refused and he had the support of some club officials.
"League officials, league security personnel and some Dodgers officials spoke with Turner, asking him to remain in isolation" following the news of his positive test. Turner, however, "was adamant about wanting to join the celebration." He had the support of "at least some club officials" to return to the field, Rosenthal wrote.
The fact that Turner was on the field in the first place has come under some question. As ESPN's Jeff Passan reported, Turner's COVID-19 test on Monday came back inconclusive. When the lab ran the tests from Tuesday, the confirmed the positive and informed MLB.
As Craig Calcaterra pointed out in a Twitter thread this morning, the bigger issue isn't so much that Turner returned to the field to celebrate with the team after winning the World Series. It's that he was allowed to continue to play after the team was informed in the second inning of the inconclusive test.
We have already seen this season in the NFL that an inconclusive test will often shut down a team's facility until the following day. Clearly, it would have been hard for MLB to completely stop the game and no one is asking that they did that. But, allowing Turner to continue to play seems to run counter to protocols.
Teammate Mookie Betts expressed no concern about Turner being out on the field after the game.
But, for many, the question was how or why Turner was allowed back on the field, to then take a maskless photo, after the game.
Keith Olbermann, a long-time Sportscenter anchor and baseball aficionado called for the Dodgers to have forfeited Game 6.
Several others pointed out that Turner was positioned for the photograph next to manager Dave Roberts, a cancer survivor.
General manager Andrew Friedman, when asked about the optics of Turner being on the field for the celebration following the positive test told reporters that while he understood the question, most of the players and coaches on the field would have been in the contract tracing protocol anyway.
"I haven't seen the pictures. I totally understand the question. If there are people around him without masks, that's not good optics at all. … But I think from our standpoint, I think the people who were around him were the people that would be in the contact tracing web anyway, which is how closely a lot of us have been around each other. Now I think subsequent tests we're going to take are really important to figure out what we do and to make sure any of us that are potentially positive do not spread it to other people."
The Dodgers are going to undergo further testing following the positive result for Turner. But, the handling of the situation has raised eyebrows and cast a shadow over an otherwise joyous occasion of the Dodgers ending their World Series drought.
