The Nationals Apparently Thought There'd Be Baseball Being Played in Late April and Nobody Knows Why

The widespread outbreak of coronavirus has left the sports world in a standstill, with virtually every professional league entering a hiatus until the pandemic is contained. MLB already announced its decision to delay Opening Day, and recent reports suggest baseball may not return until late June or July, at best.

Well, apparently the Washington Nationals didn't quite receive that information. The team's official Twitter account issued a statement regarding the COVID-19 outbreak, in which they still seemed to have been operating under the impression that games would be played in late April.

Yeah, we'll really have to get to the bottom of what to do here! Hope that chat with MLB goes well!

We applaud the optimism here from the Nats, but surely they weren't actually expecting to be back on the field by late April. With all that's going on, mid-to-late-summer is a more realistic expectation as to when baseball will resume, but the reigning champions seem unwilling to rule anything out until they have to (even though gatherings of 50+ are banned through mid-May).

While the Nats are maintaining hope, fans seem to have more realistic expectations.

The Nats are taking it one step at a time when it comes to handling ticketing for cancelled games, which is probably the right call, but their hopefulness about the idea of the season getting underway before the month of May was a bit far-fetched.