Major League Baseball decided about 50 minutes before Saturday’s Game 2 was to begin that it was going to postpone the game until Sunday afternoon at 1:08 p.m. because of persistent rain in the Washington area.
Commissioner Rob Manfred announced the change in a press conference. He said the rest of the series will go on as scheduled. As it stands now, Monday’s Game 3 is slated to being at 1 p.m., 4 p.m. Eastern, in Los Angeles.
“We hate to cancel,” said Manfred, who arrived Saturday afternoon after a flight from New York. “We hate to make travel worse on the players than it was originally intended to be. But it just doesn’t look like we’re going to have a situation that would be safe for the players to play.”
Rain stopped falling at Nationals Park around 4 p.m., about an hour after the decision was made to postpone the game. Rain was scheduled to resume in the early evening.
LA leads the best-of-five series 1-0 after a 4-3 victory Friday night.
Manfred said he expected the weather to be better Sunday at Nationals Park and hopes to be “in a sunny period.” It’s supposed to be 61 degrees and windy around game time.
Left-hander Rich Hill (12-5, 2.12 ERA) will start for the Dodgers against right-hander Tanner Roark (16-10, 2.83). Manfred said the rest of the series will proceed as scheduled with Game 3 Monday afternoon at Dodger Stadium, as the rain wiped out the travel day to the West Coast.
Nationals second baseman Daniel Murphy said players came in prepared to play but was glad the decision was made quickly.
“Hats off to Major League Baseball for canceling this early,” Murphy said. “I’m sure they didn’t want either pitcher to get out there and get caught in a situation where you lose one of them, especially in a short series like this.”
The postponement means the teams will have to play and fly Sunday.
“We do East-West travel like this during the regular season,” Manfred said. “It’s not ideal but doable.”
It’s expected to be Dodgers righty Kenta Maeda against Nationals lefty Gio Gonzalez in Game 3. LA manager Dave Roberts said lefty Julio Urias would start Game 4, if necessary, which would leave ace Clayton Kershaw available for a possible Game 5.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
• Todd Dybas can be reached at tdybas@washingtontimes.com.
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