Matt Williams planning to send Tanner Roark back to the mound when game resumes

Nationals manager Matt Williams plans to send right-hander Tanner Roark back to the mound to start the sixth inning when the Nationals and Dodgers resume the first game of the series at 2:05 p.m. Roark breezed through the fifth inning last night, retiring the Dodgers in order before the lights went out at Nationals Park for the third and final time, forcing umpires to suspend the game.

"As it sits right now, Tanner will go back out," Williams said. "He threw seven pitches last night, so he's ordinarily available today anyway for a couple innings. We'll see how he feels when gets out there and throws. If for some reason he's tight or doesn't feel good, we have options."

Roark is due to face Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner, first baseman Adrian Gonzalez and catcher Yasmani Grandal when the game restarts with the Nationals leading 3-2. Roark helped the Nationals take the lead when he opened play after the second delay with a double to left-center to begin the fifth. Yunel Escobar followed with a two-run homer over the left field fence to push the Nats in front.

Major League Baseball rules allow the Nationals and Dodgers to add a 26th player to their rosters for today's regularly scheduled game. I expect the Nationals to recall right-hander Taylor Jordan from Triple-A Syracuse for long relief support in the event Doug Fister runs into any difficulties in the nightcap.

Williams also addressed the frustrations stemming from last night's repeated power issues, which included right-hander Jordan Zimmermann's start abbreviated to just four innings.

"Once the lights came back on, you can't anticipate it happening again," he said. "Now after the second time, we collectively made a decision that if it did happen again then that would be the end of it because we just couldn't continue to run through pitching and have our guys stand out there and play an inning or two innings and have it happen again."

"Those are unforeseen that you just can't dictate how it's gonna go. I know that as soon as it happened, everybody was on the roof and working diligently to try to fix the problem. And they worked all night, too. Hopefully, I know that they want to get it resolved and we certainly do. The way the weather is right now, we may need the lights in Game 1 because it's pretty dark out there. But they feel like that they've got it resolved."

Scattered thunderstorms are forecast throughout the D.C. area today.