Washington Nationals place Juan Soto on 10-Day IL with strained left shoulder...

There aren’t any details yet, since this happened after Davey Martinez spoke with reporters on his daily pregame Zoom call, but Washington’s Nationals announced late this afternoon that Juan Soto has been placed on the 10-Day Injured List with a strained left shoulder.

Soto, 22, broke out of a mini-slump (or an 0 for 11 stretch) with a double in his fourth of five trips to the plate in the series opener with the St. Louis Cardinals on Monday night, and the outfielder was penciled in as the club’s right fielder and No. 2 hitter for the second of three with the Cards in D.C. tonight before he was scratched and placed on the IL.

Through 14 games this season, Soto has a .300/.410/.460 line, going 15 for 50 in the first few weeks of his fourth big league campaign, with two doubles, two home runs, 10 walks and seven Ks in 61 plate appearances.

Martinez said after last night’s game that he saw positive signs from Soto at the plate, after he’d doubled on a line drive to right for his first extra base hit in six games.

“As we all know, Juan can hit,” Martinez said, “and when he takes his walks, and gets the ball in the strike zone, and he hit a bullet, too bad he couldn’t get the ball up in the air, but he hit a bullet to right field, over the right fielder’s head for a double.”

Now, Soto is out of the lineup. Andrew Stevenson is starting in right tonight, and the club called Yadiel Hernández up from their Alternate Training site in Fredericksburg, VA to get another outfield bat on the roster while they wait for Soto’s shoulder to heal up.

How this happened is unclear, though Martinez will surely discuss the latest injury issue to hit his club in tonight’s post game press conference.

But for a team that dealt with a COVID infections before Opening Day, a mysterious issue with one of their late-inning arms, and just placed Stephen Strasburg on the IL with right shoulder inflammation, it’s another blow early in a season that hasn’t started the way the club hoped it would.

More information when it’s available...