Minor League, Major Damage: Pitcher Says White Sox Covid Vaccine Mandate Destroyed His Future

Minor League, Major Damage: Pitcher Says White Sox Covid Vaccine Mandate Destroyed His Future

The fallout from Biden’s COVID mandates continues to unfold….this time on the pitcher’s mound.

A former Chicago White Sox prospect says his career was destroyed after being pressured to take the Pfizer vaccine. His lawsuit is more than a personal tragedy; it’s a stark reminder of how reckless pandemic mandates upended lives and careers, with little accountability from those who insisted they were “following the science.”

A former Chicago White Sox minor league pitcher, Isaiah Carranza, has filed a federal lawsuit alleging the team coerced him into receiving the Pfizer covid vaccine in 2021 and that he later developed a permanent autonomic nervous system disorder that ended his career.

Isaiah Carranza, a 12th-round draft pick of the Sox in 2018, alleges team officials warned him he would be ‘‘blacklisted’’ if he didn’t get two doses of the vaccine, meaning they wouldn’t release him from his contract for opportunities with other clubs even though he had ‘‘no prospects of moving up’’ with the Sox.

Carranza got the Pfizer vaccine and soon began suffering ‘‘extreme dizziness, nausea, near-fainting and wildly fluctuating heart rate’’ that the team chalked up to dehydration, anxiety and ‘‘rookie nerves,’’ attorneys for Carranza claimed in his federal lawsuit, which was filed in December in Chicago.

…Carranza later was diagnosed with a nervous-system disorder that his lawyers tie to the vaccine. He never advanced beyond the Sox’ High-A affiliate and hasn’t appeared in a minor-league game since 2022.

Carranza’s lawsuit stresses the significant levels of coercion used to get him to take the vaccine, as well as the lack of support once he started to experience adverse symptoms.

The lawsuit claims the White Sox and MLB ordered minor league ballplayers to get the shot in 2021, “under threat of career-ending consequences.” Carranza claims that after following that policy and receiving the shot, he started experiencing problems. These allegedly included severe pain and dysfunction in his pitching arm, eliminating his ability to pitch at the professional level.

Carranza accuses Major League Baseball and the White Sox of failing to provide support following his vaccine-related injury. He further alleges there was a denial of any link between his injury and the shot, and that the White Sox retaliated against him for making such claims. “Ultimately, Plaintiff’s reaction to the vaccine ended his professional baseball career,” the lawsuit says.

As to the potential coercion behind Carranza’s decision to get the vaccine, the pitcher says he objected to the vaccination and requested accommodations — but felt he had no option if he wanted to continue his professional career. The lawsuit accuses the defendants of negligence and failure to warn of risks. It also argues the White Sox prioritized league-wide policy compliance rather than individual medical concerns and player safety. Carranza claims his rights were violated, because his employment and potential career advancement hinged on getting the vaccine.

The mandate did not apply to major league pitchers, only to those in the minor leagues hoping for a chance to move up.

Carranza’s case, should it proceed, will be the rare example of an employee going after an employer for health effects from the vaccination. Chiefly, lawsuits involving employers concerned terminations that ignored religious objections or otherwise related to refusal to vaccinate.

One case of an employee suing an employer over a vaccine injury involved a pilot who had already recovered from COVID but was forced to get the vaccine. The pilot ended up with a detached retina.

We had a hard time finding a medical expert willing to say that anything bad could come of COVID shots in the Chicago area – especially in 2022 and 2023. But by the end of 2023, there was an increasing amount of peer-reviewed research published that established a strong association between getting these injections and the development of both detached retinas and atrial fibrillation.

We found a physician and professor on the faculty of Yale University who was engaged in researching COVID, and they agreed to serve as a medical expert witness in our case. The employer hired their own witness from the Chicago area, who had no active medical practice and mostly writes reports for lawyers for a living.

The matter was set to go to trial in 2025, and weeks beforehand, the employer agreed to pay a settlement amount that our client was happy to accept.

It will be interesting to see if Carranza’s case is successful. Ultimately, I hope he is eventually able to recover fully. Good health is priceless.

However, his story is another reminder of how many were pressured into covid shots based on faulty assumptions we now know were wrong. The lack of accountability from officials who outsourced judgment to “experts” remains stunning.

And now we’re told “no one was forced” to get vaccinated—an absurd rewriting of history. Coercion came through job threats, mandates, and social shaming. These lawsuits and reported injuries are the predictable fallout. It’s fair to ask whether anyone driving these policies has even a hint of regret.

Sadly, many like Carraza will be dealing with the effects of the disastrous pandemic policy for years to come.

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