Most significant stories of 2021: More COVID-19 outbreaks

As we reach the final week of the year, we're taking a look back at the Nationals' most significant stories of 2021. Some of them are uplifting. Some of them are depressing. All of them were significant in telling the story of the 2021 season. We continue today with one of the most frustrating developments of the year: The loss of a host of prominent players at various times due to COVID-19. ...

After everything they went through to get through a compressed 2020 season, the first such season to be undertaken by a major North American professional sports league during the pandemic, the Nationals left West Palm Beach on March 29 and came north to Washington as optimistic as they could possibly be about the upcoming 2021 season.

Then they learned four players on the team's charter flight home had tested positive for COVID-19. And with seven other players and two staff members deemed close contacts of the original four, the Nats' season-opening series against the Mets was postponed before it ever began.

Just like that, COVID-19 was back in the picture, an unyielding disruptor to any hopes of a normal baseball season.

"Everybody across the game, we had seen so few positive cases across spring training as a whole," staff ace Max Scherzer said March 31 when the news first broke. "It just shows you how quickly that can turn. It can turn on a dime. We have to face it, and we have to overcome it."

The Nationals' 2021 season wouldn't have been saved if the coronavirus never impacted a player or a game. The team was too flawed in other ways to blame their struggles on the pandemic. But it sure did throw some unwelcome wrenches into the plan, more than once and nearly always in dramatic fashion.

It began with the initial, end-of-spring outbreak. Even with opening day pushed back five days to ensure everyone would be reasonably safe, the 26-man roster manager Davey Martinez fielded for Game 1 was missing a host of prominent names: Josh Bell, Kyle Schwarber, Josh Harrison, Yan Gomes, Alex Avila, Patrick Corbin, Jon Lester, Brad Hand, Jordy Mercer.

Martinez's first lineup of the season would feature Hernán Pérez at second base, Andrew Stevenson in left field, Ryan Zimmerman batting cleanup and Jonathan Lucroy behind the plate without having appeared in any exhibition games for the club, not to mention Cody Wilson (a 24-year-old outfielder with zero experience beyond Single-A) on the bench.

"This is who we are," the manager would say heading into the game.

Turns out the depleted Nats still found a way to defeat the eventual World Series champion Braves 6-5 with a rousing comeback, capped by Juan Soto's walk-off single off Will Smith in the bottom of the ninth.

But the early season losses of Bell, Schwarber, Corbin and Lester in particular had lasting effects. Even after getting cleared to rejoin the club, all four struggled at the outset and needed considerable time to find their form, if they did at all.

And the April outbreak wouldn't be the Nationals' last.

They lost Erick Fedde and Tanner Rainey to the COVID-19 IL in May after Fedde (who was vaccinated) tested positive and Rainey (who was not) was deemed a close contact. That disrupted perhaps the best sustained run of Fedde's pitching career, one he never recaptured.

And then, just as the entire season was dangling by a thread in the final days leading up to the July 30 trade deadline, it happened again. In the top of the first inning July 27 in Philadelphia, Trea Turner singled, advanced to third on Soto's base hit to right, then waltzed home on Bell's towering three-run homer. And upon arriving in the dugout, Turner was greeted not with high-fives and hugs, but with news the club had just been informed his most recent COVID-19 test came back positive.

Less than 24 hours later, the following night's game was postponed after it was learned three more players, plus eight staff members, also had tested positive.

Turner would never play another game in a Nationals uniform, traded with Scherzer to the Dodgers while still in quarantine. Martinez would spend the next week-plus trying to navigate through a massive roster overhaul with a slapped-together coaching staff including whatever healthy bodies were available to him at the time. (That briefly included an injured Schwarber and then Mercer serving as the de facto bench coach.)

"We all know what's going on," Martinez said at the time. "We all know the possibilities that could happen."

They might've known it was possible. But that didn't make the reality of the situation any easier to swallow.