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There will be no baseball in Nationals Park tonight. I feel bad for the person who had to break the news to Max Scherzer.
Due to inclement weather, the opening game of the Washington Nationals and San Francisco Giants’ four-game series has been postponed.
A doubleheader is scheduled for Saturday afternoon in the nation’s capital, with the first of four now to be played tomorrow night at 7:05 PM.
Via the Nationals:
“Tonight’s game has been PPD due to rain and rescheduled as a split doubleheader on Sat., June 12th.
“-Game 1 (tonight’s rescheduled game) will start at 2:05 PM ET
“-Game 2 (the originally scheduled game) will start at 7:15 PM ET
“Both games will be 7.0 inning regulation games.”
Manager Davey Martinez talked before the planned series opener about the long flight back last night, after the Nationals finished up their nine-game road trip with a long extra innings win over Tampa Bay’s Rays.
Asked when he got to sleep last night, considering the game didn’t end until 11:30 PM, the manager said, “You mean this morning? 6:30.”
Players were told to come to the park at 4:00 this afternoon, with work to start at 5:00, at which point Martinez was going to survey the damage from the road trip and late flight.
“We’ll see how the bullpen arms are here as soon as they come in and start throwing. It was a late night. Big win for us last night. But we got in late. As you know, we fly into Dulles, and a lot of guys live closer to town here, so it’s a bus ride back, and like I said, I didn’t go to sleep until 6:30, woke up at 11:30, rip-raring to go, so I think I’ll feel the effects probably tomorrow, but tonight hopefully I’ll get a good night’s sleep and be ready to go tomorrow.”
Tonight's game between the Nats and the Giants has been postponed due to inclement weather.
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) June 10, 2021
It will be made up as part of a split doubleheader on Saturday. pic.twitter.com/5S9LWVJRRU
No official word yet (as of 7:03 PM ET), but Max Scherzer will most likely be on the mound in D.C. tomorrow night.
He flew back early, Martinez explained, rather than accompany the team on their two-game trip to Tampa Bay.
“Max came home on the day off [Monday],” Martinez said. “And he stayed here. There was no need for him to go, because we had the night game, and he would have had to come back early yesterday afternoon. So, I just talked to Max, and we got somebody to catch his bullpen.
“He came in, he worked out, he did everything he needed to do, and I talked to him today, he’s rip-raring to go.
“I didn’t want him flying, also because of protocol, flying back and forth to get back here to go to Tampa for one day to me didn’t make any sense.”
Someone was smart enough to ask about that “somebody” who caught Scherzer’s bullpen with the whole team in Florida.
“We had a college guy catch it,” Martinez said. “He was jacked up.”
Where do you turn for a college catcher who can handle Scherzer in a bullpen session?
Which college?
“I don’t know from what school,” the manager said. “One of our strength and conditioning guys knows those guys around here that can do that, we have guys that live here during the winter times, so we always look for high school guys that can catch and so forth, we always have some guys in our pocket.”