Welcome to The Opener, where every weekday during the regular season you’ll get a fresh, topical story to start your day from one of SI.com’s MLB writers.
The Nationals are off Thursday. That is merciful both generally, with the state of this roster, and specifically, with the fact that it would have been a start day for Patrick Corbin. The club announced earlier this week that it would take the opportunity to skip him in the rotation—but, lest fans grow too excited, they clarified he would still make his next start as scheduled on Tuesday. And then manager Dave Martinez offered something vaguely chilling.
“I want to leave this year with a positive moving forward to next year,” said Martinez, according to Andrew Golden of The Washington Post. “Because, regardless of what anyone thinks, he’s going to be one of our starters next year and the year after that.”
