Yankees: Aroldis Chapman Tests Positive for COVID-19, Out for ‘Foreseeable Future’

New York Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman has tested positive for COVID-19.

Yankees fans should’ve known better. Nowadays, every shred of good news is followed by a bigger piece of bad news.

Moments after we saw Masahiro Tanaka playing catch at Yankee Stadium just a week after taking a line drive off the head, we learned closer Aroldis Chapman will be away from the team for the “foreseeable future” after testing positive for COVID-19.

Manager Aaron Boone dropped the news on Saturday afternoon.

You’ve gotta be kidding. I mean, not really though, because this was bound to happen. We’ve seen countless players test positive, with DJ LeMahieu as the top-billed Yankees star up until this point. Others across the league are out of action as a result, too.

It’s just an even bigger gut punch because of how well things were going for New York. The team got back to the Bronx early last week and have hit the ground running at Spring Training 2.0. Now, after the Tanaka scare, the Yankees have traded the right-hander’s health for Chapman hitting the shelf.

If there’s any good news to take from this, it’s that the left-hander is fine, showing mild symptoms.

At this rate, we have no idea when players would be able to return after a COVID-19 diagnosis. We’d have to assume each team is going to take every precaution and follow the protocol even more strictly to prevent the spread, since a larger outbreak will doom the entire season.

NYY fans were especially excited to see Chapman blow batters away in the early going too. He’s been a big topic of conversation on social media after posting photos in which he looked jacked out of his mind, so everyone was waiting for the triple-digits to rock the radar gun.

Now, we have no idea when that’ll be a possibility.