Washington Nationals’ season opener postponed due to COVID concerns...

According to multiple reports this morning, the Washington Nationals and New York Mets’ 2021 season opener has been postponed over COVID concerns following the Nationals’ announcement yesterday of a positive test for one of their players and the news that a group of five (four players and one staff member) were placed in quarantine after having been in close contact with the player who tested positive.

Mike Rizzo was confident when he spoke with reporters on Wednesday afternoon that in spite of the fact that the club had one positive COVID test come out of their March 29th testing and four players and one staff member in quarantine after contact tracing, there would be a game tonight in the nation’s capital.

“We’re going to play tomorrow night,” Rizzo assured reporters on a Zoom call, though there was a possibility of more bad news since the club did another’s round of scheduled testing following the one positive result after most of the club flew on a charter flight from West Palm Beach, FL to D.C. before they’d received the results that included the initial positive.

“We took a rapid test and the saliva MLB test,” upon returning to Washington, he explained, “so we’ll know a little sooner rather than later on the rapid test, and the MLB test will be the typical 36 hours from now.”

Rizzo said the club would obviously have to make some roster adjustments, but he thought at the time they would be able to call players up from the Alternate Training site in Virginia.

“We’re certainly prepared for it, no matter what the numbers they throw at us. Hey, we got a game tomorrow against [Jacob] deGrom and the Mets and we’re going to field the best team that we can to win that game and moving forward. So, I think that all the failsafes were in place for this type of scenario and we’ve got a group of good, young, hungry players 60 miles away in Fredericksburg to help us win tomorrow night.”

No word yet on what changed that resulted in the game now being postponed, but as the reports today suggest, there is concern that there could be another positive result. Also, it appears they won’t be able to take advantage of tomorrow’s scheduled off day to make up tonight’s game. More info when it’s available (and officially announced by the teams).