I agree with everything except why they are doing it.
They are doing it for the same reason most any business does anything. This will save the Nats a few bucks per account.
Agree with all three prior posts, but quoting yours... You're right, it does save money not printing the tickets and likely their main motivation behind the move. That's the most infuriating part of it all - Printing the tickets in bulk for all STHers costs them what, a pittance at best? My seat being $5k a year, the cheapest a couple hundred... Printing them is a fraction of a fraction for me, and a fraction for the cheapest seats.
There's no excuse to have this done in this manner, much less done at all. At least make it opt in this year. If you want it, great. Doing this all at once, for an opening day transition with 45k people? There is no way, no possible way, it isn't a huge cluster. Even if the system runs perfectly, which it won't, the fans are going to cause a nightmare. Such an awful decision, without any benefit whatsoever to me and 99% of the fans in all likelihood.
Like HalfSmokes said, they're inventing a solution when no one had an issue to begin with. Tickets easily sold on StubHub linked to STH pages, email control of a ticket easily. Any digital abilities offered were already in place and working fine WITH a paper ticket system.
And I'd email my ticket rep, but what's the point? They ain't gonna change it. Best case is I nag and moan and they offer a couple bucks as compensation. Worst case is that it causes them to do something like offering me paper tickets this year only and somehow I end up with my seat deleted accidentally and sold as single game seats. I'm not the type to bother CS folks unless I really have a problem, and even then its usually a nightmare of screwups. If a hundred people emails their rep today, it's too late to change anything for this year.
This is going to happen, OD is going to be an epic disaster, and it's going to be a hassle and worse/harder experience as a STH compared with receiving an annual package of paper tickets each year. Them's the facts, only issue left is with accepting them and the repercussions they bear.