Athletics left-hander Jesus Luzardo has tested positive for the coronavirus, Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reports (Twitter links). He’ll go into self isolation and need a pair of negative tests, separated by at least 24 hours, before he can return to the team. Fortunately, Luzardo tells Slusser that he’s “feeling good” and “ready to get going” once he receives that pair of negative tests.
There’d been some prior concern about Luzardo and right-hander Mike Fiers, as the two regularly worked out together during the league’s shutdown and had both been absent from camp. Margin Gallegos of MLB.com tweeted earlier that Fiers is back in camp and working out with the club, so it seems he tested negative.
The 22-year-old Luzardo is widely considered to be among the five best pitching prospects in all of baseball and is expected to play a key role in the Oakland rotation both this year and for the foreseeable future. The recent diagnosis and subsequent need to remove himself from A’s Summer Camp could conceivably delay his readiness to start early in the year, though that type of speculation is of course secondary to his overall well-being.
Luzardo made his MLB debut with the A’s last year, tossing 12 innings and allowing just two runs on five hits and three walks with 16 strikeouts. A strained rotator cuff limited Luzardo’s time on the mound in general last season, but he was similarly excellent in 43 minor league innings: 2.51 ERA, 11.9 K/9, 1.7 BB/9. He’s expected to join Fiers, Sean Manaea, Frankie Montas, Chris Bassitt and fellow top prospect A.J. Puk in what should be a formidable mix of Oakland starters in 2020.
Looking forward to watching this kid pitch. One of the better ROY possibilities too. Hope he manages to get into the season before to long because these are the players that need the service time the most.
He only walked 3 guys, not 13 in his 2019 MLB debut season.
If the A’s young pitchers stay healthy, they are going to be tough the next few years.
Ps: i believe Luzardo had 3 walks in 2019 at the major league level
I’m glad you included his last name in the headline.
If these young pitchers in Oakland live up to the hype, they are going to be a really tough team to beat. Anything can happen this year, but unless Beane trades away half the team or these kids fail miserably in the short 2020 season, Oakland will most likely be the favorite to win the AL West in 2021. Let’s hope they are able to keep their core together. Baseball is better when Oakland is competitive.
Manea and Montas are both already pretty good, and I trust Puk. I think they have a real shot to put together a solid core 4.
@dorothy – don’t always agree with what you write but acknowledge that your comments are always well thought out and well scripted.
There won’t be any trading away – in the short term at least, even in Oakland – because Luzardo, Puk, Montas, even Manaea are cheap as chips and under control for three (Manaea) to five years. Add the two Matts and Laureano to the mix and we’re in a really good place. I could witter on about the veterans, & the swiss army knives, (Fiers who’s news seems a long old tme ago now!, Piscotty, Pinder & Canha) and could add that the 2018 bullpen would have led the 2019 team to a division title….. But I won’t ;0)
The A’s are in a good place right now. Well, relatively speaking anyway..
Moving on to fantasy baseball – I’ll take a Red Sox vs A’s ALCS. That was my plan in 2013 – when I was across with a Sox friend and saw the lads make a mess of it in/vs Detroit. I did get to meet Jerry Blevins Dad in the lift of the Detroit hotel we were both staying at. It wasn’t planned, really decent bloke more pleased with his son’s degree than any involvement in baseball….
I did at least get to see Mr Ortiz’s grand slam in game two of the ALCS at Fenway. Nearly had to borrow one of the defibrillators to taser my Sox friend back to reality….
I’m more worried about the Oakland offense taking a hit over the next couple of years. Siemen is all but gone after this season and Chapman will be looking for a big dollar extension. I really hope they figure out how to keep Chapman long term. He’s a Top 10 player in MLB right now and is only going to get better.
@Dorothy
Yep, Semien will be gone and I doubt we’ll have the beans to keep more than one of the two Matts.
The big thing will be breaking ground on the new site or (more likely) Colisseum 2.0, prior to that the (I hate using the word franchise) team will inevitably be prospect rather than proven rich…
That’s life as an A’s fan, propects, re-tread veterans (the 17th coming of Edwin Jackson) and the occasional blowing of the rainy day fund on Billy Butler. I don’t mind, as an A’s fan and a Moneyball convert I signed up for it.
Oakland will have to pay Diekman 750k in 2022 and Piscotty 1m in 2023 to buyout their respective contracts. Piscotty’s 7.5m in 2022 is the only committed salary they’re responsible for.
There is literally nothing on the books beyond that, and given the insignificant expenses following the 2021 season, it’s easy to see Oakland saving up and making a respectable effort to retain both Olson and Chapman beyond 2023, even if they were to test free agency.
Most of Oakland’s projected core will be pre-arb or first year arb-eligible in 2024, so it’s easy to see how they might try to extend their window, rather than cash-in and start another rebuild sooner than they really need to.
@AsfanLondonUK it would have been nice to see Franklin Bareto break out but he seems to be a bust now in the same vein as Jurickson Profar. Still to early to tell I guess.
@mantooth
D’accord.
If they come close to the hype they’re going to be tough.
I spent a couple years in Oakland (aka Bump City back then). Been to the Coliseum a bunch of times. Awesome fans. Saw the Raiders play, too. Didn’t care for seeing them move. Although, I understand why they did.
Indeed, baseball does seem better when Oakland is good.
Also… man, it’s tough that you are not cooperating with my narrative about red sox fans.
I’m just not sure how to react to this.
😉
These positive results been coming in like a machine gun last several days. Will the season get started?
They aren’t new positives for the most part and basically the initial tests for intake.
The SF Chronicle reported yesterday that Luzardo and Mike Fiers were both being held out of training for “a pending issue.” Any word on Fiers yet?
He’s clean, threw a bullpen today with the rest.
Sweet, clean as a whistle(blower)
Manaea, Montas, Luzardo, Puk is a very solid top 4. It’s cool to see the Athletics and Mariners could have two of the top young rotations in baseball for years to come.
Hype seldom matches reality. How many top notch pitchers have the A’s produced in the last 15 years?
They’ll be fortunate if they go two for four, let alone four for four.
If I was an A’s fan, I’d be optimistic, But prospects are suspect. And pitching prospects are very suspect.
Coming from an Angels fan this is hilarious. Haven’t produced a top their pitcher from their system since Weaver in 2006.
Richard would have qualified…..had he stayed healthy, but he didn’t.
Right, since 2006, I completely agree. Many highly rated, very talented prospects. Yet nothing special.
I have no idea how that’s even remotely goes against what I wrote.
Producing starting pitchers is hard. Expecting a PED user and three injured pitchers to be solid is insanely optimistic.
If you go two for four, that’s an impressive feat. Thinking you are going four for four is naive.
Luzardo, Puk, Montas, Manaea.
One has to be the “ace” of the staff. They don’t need two of four or four of four.
If they find an ace and the rest become 3,4 or 5 starters they’ve succeeded. They don’t need each one to be a 1 or 2. Would be nice but long as one established himself as the ace and rest are capable arms A’s did well.
The way baseball is evolving you don’t even need them to be traditional starters. You could take the injury prone pitchers and treat them as openers who go 3-4 innings to limit workloads or use them as 2-3 inning guys to relieve the opener.
With due respect to all, I am certainly no Angels fan. But I do cut HalozzFan some slack, I remember Nick Adenhart, gone now about 11 years. He’d be only 31 now and in the prime of his promising career. I remember Tyler Skaggs who left us in July at the age of 27. Imagine those two at the apex of their trajectories. The thing that binds to the Green & Gold? Each made his last start in Anaheim against the A’s.
Except they aren’t suspect since they are all at in the majors.
Wrong, they are all suspect. Three coming off major injuries and one was suspended for PED use.
@ Halo11fan
You’re right, Puk & Luzardo have thrown a total of 23.1 MLB innings between them, Frankie M spent half a season appealing against PED violation, but went 9-2 with all that going on in the background….
It’s a potentially heavy rather than proven performance heavy rotation. But even including Manaea & Fiers, the total annual cost of that rotation is – guessing – around about the cost of two plus months of a Grenike, a Cole or a Verlander.
If I was an A’s fan, I’d be insanely optimistic. I understand the optimism.
I get the impression many A’s fans think it’s a done deal. I’m just saying it’s not.
I think if you get two out of four, you should be happy and count your blessings.
Cool. Its still a great young roation to build around. If they are suspect I woner what on earth the Angels rotation is.
What’s Ohtani? What’s Heaney? What’s Canning? #56 Prospect.
If you want to say suspect, or very suspect. Amen. However, if you say they are suspect but the A’s staff is not, I’d disagree.
Heaney has been a tease for 5 yeare. Ohtani isn’t suspect. Cannings elbow is very scary.
“3 coming off of major injuries.” Isn’t Ohtani just coming back from elbow reconstruction himself? Doesn’t he have only a total of 10 mlb starts himself? Isn’t Griffin Canning also coming off a major injury? Oh right no, just a minor one that required a PRP injection and those work great! Just ask Garrett Richards or the aforementioned Ohtani. Heaney is a guy with 2 seasons out of 5 with at least 100IP, and that with a mid 4 ERA. Not exactly a workhorse. Or a major talent.
They’ve produced a lot of quality pitchers the last 20 years, the problem is that they seem to always get hurt and don’t last long.
Briffle, do you mean the Angels.
Either hurt or dead. Aidenhart #27 prospect. Skaggs #12 prospect.
Richards was on his way to Cy Young consideration before a freak knee injury. Heaney #25 prospect.
Things happen.
Uh, no. I was talking about Oakland.
I maintain the July – mid Sept 2014 Angels were the best team I’ve ever seen.
I only have a 10 year sample size as an English convert to baseball so I might look an idiot comparing them to (say) the 2001 Mariners.
And then in Sept 2014 Scioscia ran over his neighbours cat, Richards knee exploded and the curse began.
Is it a year (exactly?) since Tyler Skaggs death? It seems like about 15 years. Still so very sad…..
Briffle.
The thing is, you could be talking about almost any team’s young pitching.
How? The article is about an Oakland pitcher and the thread I commented on was talking about Oakland pitchers. Idk why you would think I’d be talking about any other team in the league.
It wasn’t all that long ago that late in the year every Angel hitter was batting over 300.
In baseball, things change fast.
It could turn around tomorrow or not turn around for decades.
Because it’s hard to tell what post people are responding to, or if they are resounding to any posts at all.
The A’s look quite likely to have a top 5 rotation in the future. Obviously it is not a done deal yet, but it is likely. Then again, the Dodgers, Padres, Tigers, Indians and another team or two have tremendous young pitching talent as well. It’s all about who actually works out and stays healthy. But the A’s seem to be starting with as much talent as anybody.
Get well, brother. And y’all stay safe out here. You’re on my fantasy team – Reverend Evil Al’s Army! And have been for years, now…
Damn, how loaded is Oakland’s pitching? It’s nuts.
is d*** word allowed here?
*Martín Gallegos. Darn autocorrect?
This is not going to work—you can’t run a sports league during a pandemic. Until a proven vaccine is made available, the MLB and other leagues should cancel the 2020 season.
@ChiSox
My country (UK) has a similar caseload per head of population to the US. EPL has managed to resurrect it’s season, so while I agree the MLB challenges are immense (and arguably much more complex due to scheduling) I don’t think they should be considered insurmountable.
I just don’t think – for a variety of reasons, some financial. some societal, some that don’t end in al, that we should be giving up on it just yet.
Yours with blind optimism….
@chisoxcity
You could certainly be correct. I’ve nothing to really go on except my experience.
So.
I definitely heard more than once that a construction company can not be run during a pandemic, too.
Obviously, this is a vastly smaller scale than MLB.
But.
We’ve also far less resources.
So.
Not only have we, we’ve also been running as high volume as some of our best seasons.
I realize the wheels could come off at any time. I mean Covid-19 could rip through my crews. That’s definitely *not* a given, however.
It could go perfectly.
It could be a disaster.
Smart money is it’ll be somewhere in between.
Alright.
Been looking forward to the next hour of my life all day. Swinging through an abandoned farm with my dogs. Going to try and jump some rock doves.
Y’all stay cool. 😉
&, of course, good hunting.
As an A’s fan I’m very optimistic but know better how prospects and especially pitchers flame out. I became an A’s/baseball fan around 1989-1990(yes, a frontrunner but hey I was like 9) and remember the Van Poppel/Dressendorfer/Zancanaro/Peters “4 Aces” baseball card as it’s permanently emblazed in my mind. Player development has come a long way but still lots of variables.
No harm, no foul, no symptoms. We’ve handled Covid bass-ackwards. As many boxes as I check on the vulnerability scale I, and those like me, should have been tested, shut away for months and poked with sharp sticks. Instead , though I wear a mask in public, I AM in public. I’m retired, I don’t work, and make a living off my pension.. We managed to crash our booming economy, brought despair to (my) children and grandchildren. Prom season was canceled. Even a slug like ne got to go to my senior prom, worked a summer job and took an olive-drab bus to my pre-induction Army physical in, of all places, Oakland. I have yet to be tested for Covid. Next time let’s do this right: Confine the vulnerable, make us wear masks, and let those 20-to-50 who don’t have pensions to fall back on, work to their hearts’ content, mas, maskless and happy. And let Baby Jesus pitch up a storm.