Null Pointer Exception when attempting to close an invalid connection

I'm in the process of upgrading from MariaDB 5.5.56 to 10.3.17. As part of this I went from using mysql-connector-java version 5.1.35 to using mariadb-connector-java version 2.6.0. One of my java applications is now crashing at start up (the others are working with this setup). I've attached a stack trace and an approximate version of what my code is doing.

Looking at the mariaDB Connector/J code I see that AbstractConnectProtocol is calling SendClosePacket.send with a null PacketOutputStream. I'm not sure where the exact problem is but I think MariaDB Connector should at least be throwing a better exception.

if (!connection.isValid(0)) {

  connection.getConnection().close(); // exception happens here

}

  [ERROR] java.lang.NullPointerException

  [ERROR]         at org.mariadb.jdbc.internal.com.send.SendClosePacket.send(SendClosePacket.java:68)

  [ERROR]         at org.mariadb.jdbc.internal.protocol.AbstractConnectProtocol.close(AbstractConnectProtocol.java:382)

  [ERROR]         at org.mariadb.jdbc.internal.protocol.AbstractQueryProtocol.closeExplicit(AbstractQueryProtocol.java:1384)

  [ERROR]         at org.mariadb.jdbc.MariaDbConnection.close(MariaDbConnection.java:777)