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...

In a time when there is still so much uncertainty in the world, there are some things we do know for a fact as it relates to the 2021 baseball season. Spring training started on time and was completed without any serious hiccups. The Nationals will start their 2021 campaign eventually, even after a player returned a positive COVID-19 test yesterday and opening day against the Mets was postponed. There is no universal designated hitter and the regular 10-team postseason is back, while the...

Opening day brings the hope of a new baseball season. Not even a positive COVID-19 test can change that. "We're gonna play tomorrow night," confirmed general manager Mike Rizzo on a Zoom call with reporters Wednesday afternoon after announcing the unfortunate, but not devastating, news. What opening day does not bring, however, is any clarity on Max Scherzer's future contract situation with the Nationals. After the conversation switched to more baseball-related topics, Rizzo was asked if he...

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...

There are only 19 days to go until opening night at Nationals Park, and there are still a whole lot of decisions that must be made before then. Will Joe Ross be the No. 5 starter? Will Victor Robles be leading off? Will Carter Kieboom be the starting third baseman? Who will round out the bullpen and the bench? Oh, yeah, and this little question that still needs to be answered: Will any fans be allowed in the park to watch the Nationals and Mets open the season? In some respects, it's kind of...

Some news and notes for you on this Friday morning ... * Today is the deadline for all clubs to add players to their 40-man roster and protect them from the Rule 5 draft, so look for the Nationals to make an announcement on a few guys at some point. The Rule 5 draft, which is scheduled to take place Dec. 10 to wrap up the virtual Winter Meetings, allows clubs to select away minor leaguers from other organizations and add them to their major league roster. Any player drafted for $100,000 must...

Well, opening day certainly proved to be eventful, if not exactly satisfying for the Nationals. They learned Juan Soto had tested positive for the novel coronavirus and couldn't open the season on the active roster. They raised their World Series flag and pennant in an empty stadium with no fans to cheer them on. They joined the Yankees in kneeling on the field following a recorded video on racial justice before standing for the national anthem. Then they got to play only five full innings...

It should've been a glorious day, a chance to celebrate what happened at the end of the 2019 season and begin the 2020 season with a marquee matchup. Alas, July 23, 2020 will not be remembered fondly by anyone in these parts. Unless you're a Yankees fan glad your team was awarded a rain-shortened 4-1 victory over the Nationals to cap off an evening that didn't go according to anyone's plan. The Nationals lost their season opener after managing one hit (Adam Eaton's first-inning homer) in...

And so it begins. The strangest season in baseball history gets underway with the strangest opening night in baseball history. The defending champion Nationals will raise a flag and a pennant and face the sport's most-storied franchise, even though it comes from the American League. It will be televised nationally, with artificial crowd noise pumped through the otherwise empty stadium's public address system. And the Nationals' star slugger won't be in the lineup after he tested positive...

The Nationals' season-opening roster will not include the team's best and brightest young star. Juan Soto was not included on the Nats' initial 30-man roster and will not be active for tonight's opener against the Yankees after testing positive for COVID-19, general manager Mike Rizzo announced this afternoon. Soto, like others on the team, was tested Tuesday. He is asymptomatic, but early this morning his test result came back positive, said Rizzo, who added all other tests taken by...

When they take the field Thursday night for the first time in 2020, the Nationals will do so as defending World Series champions, having just raised a flag and pennant minutes earlier. They'll be sending their potential future Hall-of-Famer Max Scherzer to the mound. The opponents, the Yankees, are merely baseball's most-storied franchise, one sending its new ace, Gerrit Cole, to the mound in its first step toward competing for its 28th World Series title. This would be a blockbuster event...

Though Wander Suero and Roenis Elías have rejoined the Nationals and have been cleared to work out with the club, neither reliever will be ready to open the season on the active roster. Suero and Elías were among the group of 11 players who were not initially cleared to participate in summer training at Nationals Park, either because they tested positive for COVID-19 or were exposed to someone else who did. Both were placed on the 10-day injured list July 13. Elías, though, was cleared...