Was the Phillies-Nationals Game Delayed Today? Has it Started Again?

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The Philadelphia Phillies and Washington Nationals are dealing with a weather delay today, leaving fans waiting as officials monitor conditions.

The rain delay in the Washington Nationals-Philadelphia Phillies game was set to end 90 minutes after it began. A severe thunderstorm system moving across the Washington, D.C., area affected Monday night’s Phillies-Nationals game at Nationals Park, causing the start of the game to be delayed, according to a Washington Nationals announcement.

But at 7:40 p.m. the Nationals announced that the game would start at “approximately 8:15 p.m.” That would mean a delay of roughly 90 minutes from the game’s originally scheduled start time.

Just five minutes earlier, sports meteorologist Kevin Roth had posted that rain appeared on radar to be moving out of the area and said that the Nationals “should announce a start time soon if they haven’t already done so.”

The game got underway at 8:17 local time, a delay of 92 minutes.

The Weather.com forecast for the Washington, D.C., area showed thunderstorms continuing past 11 p.m., though with a slight opening occurring around 9 p.m., raising the possibility of a second delay later in the evening with the game underway.

If the game ends up in a postponement, the teams could presumably play a doubleheader on one of the three remaining days of the series. Or they could reschedule the game for Sept. 14 when both the Phillies and Nationals have an open date on their schedules.

The weather threat comes at a particularly difficult time for Washington, which is set to hand the ball to breakout left-hander Foster Griffin while already navigating multiple pitching injuries. Any postponement could create havoc in the Nationals’ rotation and complicate scheduling for both clubs.

Phillies vs. Nationals Delay for Tonight’s Game

The National Weather Service placed the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia region under a Severe Thunderstorm Watch through 9 p.m. ET Monday, with the NWS cataloging risks that include heavy rainfall, wind gusts up to 70 mph inside the most active cells, quarter-size hail, flash flooding and isolated tornado activity. Lightning is the central concern for any outdoor event in the affected corridor.

Game-time conditions at Nationals Park were projected near 83°F, with an 80% chance of precipitation and southwest winds around 10 mph, according to RotoWire‘s MLB weather report, ahead of the scheduled 6:45 p.m. first pitch in the Phillies-Nationals matchup. Rainfall totals between 0.5 and 0.75 inches are expected, with heavier accumulations possible in the strongest storm cells. Southwest winds of 14 to 16 mph with gusts reaching 24 mph are forecast to persist through the evening.

Thunderstorm activity was already building across the region hours before game time, with forecasters projecting the heaviest and most numerous storms arriving after approximately 2 p.m. — a timeline that put the scheduled 6:45 p.m. start directly in the path of peak activity.

Foster Griffin and the Nationals’ Rotation Depth

Griffin has been one of Washington’s few mound success stories in 2026. The left-hander enters Monday’s start with a 7-2 record, a 3.32 ERA, a 1.11 WHIP and 80 strikeouts across 84 innings of work, per ESPN stats. A postponement would slide his outing to a makeup date, most likely a doubleheader, forcing the Nationals to burn bullpen depth on short notice and potentially scrambling the order of starts for the rest of the homestand.

That depth is already thin. Washington is currently without starter Jake Irvin, on the 15-day IL, and starters Josiah Gray and reliever Max Kranick, both on the 60-day IL, according to ESPN. Stacking a postponement on top of that situation tightens the rotation math considerably for manager Blake Butera.

Philadelphia enters the series on a two-game run with a 6-2 win over the New York Mets on Sunday following a 15-3 blowout on Saturday. The Phillies are 42-35 and hold second place in the NL East. The Nationals are 40-38 in fourth. Philadelphia owns a 2-1 edge in the season series heading into this four-game set in Washington.

Philadelphia’s starter is listed as undecided, which builds in some flexibility for a postponement scenario. Still, a rainout disrupts rest schedules, travel logistics and rotation sequencing for the visiting club — costs that cut both ways in a division race that remains genuinely unsettled. Doubleheaders pile stress on bullpens and catchers in ways that linger for days.

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