Here's some good news to brighten your Monday morning: The Nationals are going to hold a workout today at Nationals Park, and they're finally going to open their season Tuesday.
It's far from ideal, and the roster that takes the field Tuesday afternoon to face the Braves is going to be missing a significant number of big league players. But given the apparent severity of the situation when the weekend began, it's probably the best possible scenario they realistically could've asked for.
At...
The Nationals were cleared to open their season Tuesday against the Braves after another round of tests came back negative for COVID-19, and will be given the opportunity to hold a full workout for all healthy and eligible players at Nationals Park on Monday.
Major League Baseball made the much anticipated announcement late tonight after another long day of uncertainty. Though the Nationals (who now have 11 players and two staff members in quarantine) saw their fourth consecutive game postponed...
Mason Denaburg, the Nationals' 2018 first-round draft pick and eighth-ranked prospect, will miss the season after recently undergoing Tommy John surgery, a club official confirmed.
It's another tough blow for the oft-injured Denaburg, who since he was selected 27th in the country out of Merritt Island (Fla.) High School three years ago has thrown only 20 1/3 professional innings due to arm troubles.
The 21-year-old right-hander, who received a $3 million signing bonus, appeared in seven games...
As they waited for approval to resume full workouts in preparation for the delayed start to their season, the Nationals added the first player from outside the organization who could find himself on an opening day roster that will be stacked with unexpected reinforcements.
Veteran catcher Jonathan Lucroy agreed to terms on a minor league contract Saturday night, a source familiar with the deal confirmed, and presumably will be available should the Nats need to replace one or both of their major...
The Nationals have for the last 72 hours been in what Mike Rizzo referred to as "crisis management mode." Every moment the longtime general manager has been awake since learning one of his players tested positive for COVID-19 has been spent trying to coordinate contact tracing, trying to figure out who's healthy and who isn't healthy and trying to figure out which 26 players ultimately are going to take the field on opening day (whenever that is).
"That's often the way that this job is,"...
The Nationals' entire weekend series against the Mets was postponed today by Major League Baseball, with four players having officially tested positive for COVID-19 and six others (five players, one staff member) in mandatory quarantine after being designated close contacts.
The postponement of all three scheduled games at Nationals Park wasn't a terribly surprising announcement, given the news of the last 24 hours, but it's nonetheless another disappointing development for both clubs, which...
These are, unfortunately, uncertain times for the Nationals. They were all set to open the 2021 season Thursday night against the Mets, then learned the game had been postponed when one (eventually three, possibly four) players tested positive for COVID-19.
Now, with Major League Baseball declaring the game would not be made up today, the Nats face another day stuck at home in isolation, awaiting results of another round of tests that should help determine whether they can actually play as...
Two more Nationals players, and potentially a third, have now tested positive for COVID-19, all of them close contacts to the original player who learned Wednesday he had tested positive, leaving the team's season-opening series against the Mets in flux.
General manager Mike Rizzo delivered that new batch of unpleasant news early this evening after the results of the tests the entire team took Wednesday morning came back. The Nationals now have reason to believe four of their players in total...
The Nationals' 2021 season won't begin tonight, and at this point, it's too soon to know for certain when it will be commence after Major League Baseball postponed the scheduled opener against the Mets due to ongoing contact tracing within the Nationals organization following Wednesday's discovery that a player tested positive for COVID-19.
No makeup date has been determined, but the league said in a statement that the game will not be played Friday "out of an abundance of caution."
The...
The day has come at last. The 2021 baseball season begins today. All 30 clubs are scheduled to play, including the Nationals in tonight's nationally televised opener against the Mets. Fans will be in attendance everywhere, 5,000 of them here.
Alas, five members of the Nats' expected opening night roster will not be there after one tested positive for COVID-19 and four others were deemed close contacts to him. It turns today into more of a bittersweet event than a full-on celebration of...
The Nationals will be without at least five players and one staff member for Thursday night's season opener after learning early this morning one of the players tested positive for COVID-19, general manager Mike Rizzo announced today.
After making it through six full weeks of spring training with zero positive tests in the organization, the Nationals had every reason to be confident as they headed north to begin the season. But in the round of testing that took place Monday morning before...
The Nationals went 93-69 in 2019 and won the World Series, then returned in 2020 to go 24-36 and finish tied for last place in the National League East.
There are two lines of thought when trying to analyze what happened last season. Either this was the start of an inevitable downward trend for an organization that spent so long climbing the mountain to finally reach the ultimate peak, or it was a complete and utter aberration because of the unprecedented circumstances of the pandemic-shortened...
The Nationals woke up this morning in Washington. Spring training is officially over, and the final countdown to opening night is on.
This was a spring unlike any previous one, with protocols, reduced fan capacities and reduced travel across Florida. But it still was, first and foremost, about baseball. The Nats avoided any real COVID-19 issues and were able to keep their focus on the field, which is exactly how every team should want it to be.
To that end, we spent a lot of time talking about...
The final day of spring training is about a starter building up his pitch count, a few relievers getting some last-minute work in and everybody else just avoiding injury.
The Nationals, it would appear, survived today's Grapefruit League finale, a 2-2 tie with the Astros at their shared complex in West Palm Beach, Fla.
Next up: a charter flight to Washington, a day off so everyone can get settled in, a workout and simulated game at Nationals Park on Wednesday evening, and then it's go...
Though the Nationals don't doubt Juan Soto and Starlin Castro will be ready to play in Thursday night's season opener in Washington, both players will have to do so without having appeared in the final three games of the exhibition season in Florida.
Neither Soto nor Castro is in the lineup for today's Grapefruit League finale against the Astros, but each took five at-bats during a simulated game outside The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches this morning and experienced no issues with the minor...
And so we have arrived at the final day of spring training. Six weeks just flew by, right?
The Nationals have one last exhibition to play today against the Astros, one final battle for Palm Beach, if you will. At this stage of the process, it's a whole lot of regulars playing, and both teams have prominent starters on the mound: Stephen Strasburg and Jake Odorizzi.
Strasburg has looked perfectly fine all spring, showing no ill effects of his carpal tunnel syndrome nor the ruptured calf tendon...
Ballplayers have long since learned how to compartmentalize spring training, how to focus on what needs to be accomplished on an individual day and not start thinking too far ahead. It's a six-week camp, remember. The last thing you want to catch yourself doing on Feb. 21 is counting down how many days are left.
There comes a point late in every spring, though, when it becomes perfectly acceptable to acknowledge the finish line. Once it's truly within reach, everyone knows it and everyone's...
A manager has two goals on March 28: Get everybody who still needs work enough work before camp ends, and make sure everybody's healthy when the charter plane takes off in 24 hours.
Davey Martinez took solace in both regards following the Nationals' 11-3 win over the Cardinals today in the penultimate game of the Grapefruit League season. His heart did skip a beat momentarily when Josh Harrison (just named the opening night second baseman) was struck by a pitch in the left hand, though...
The Nationals intend to open the season with Starlin Castro as their everyday third baseman and Josh Harrison as their primary second baseman, manager Davey Martinez revealed today while discussing the horde of moves announced by the club Saturday that all but set the opening night roster.
In deciding to option both Carter Kieboom and Luis GarcÃa to their alternate training site in Fredericksburg, the Nats are left with nothing but veteran infielders on their projected 26-man roster. That...
We've reached the final stretch at last. Two more days, two more exhibition games before the Nationals break camp and head north for good. And after Saturday's events, there suddenly isn't much left for them to decide before opening day.
The swath of transactions they made during the off-day essentially set the 26-man roster. Unless they acquire another infielder or reliever before Thursday, the opening night lineup is almost certainly going include both Starlin Castro and Josh Harrison, the...