The energy was lacking. The losing was painful. What do you do? You have a team meeting. The Washington Nationals are now 4-1 since their team meeting in Atlanta. The new buzz words used over and over by manager Dave Martinez are “energy and attitude.”

Hustle has not been an issue on this team — but energy and effort at times seemed to be lacking from what we saw. Sure, during a 7-game losing streak, that is seen often. After DFAs of Colin Poche and Lucas Sims, along with the demotion of Eduardo Salazar, the bullpen was no longer the problem. The bats had gone cold for about 78 percent of the lineup. Only James Wood and CJ Abrams have remained consistently good for almost all of the season. Since that team meeting, the bats have awoken. And the Nats have scored 31-runs, a 6.20 run per game average in that span. The energy can be felt. The smiles are back. Can you feel the Natitude?

Those were words from a player, and not any observation from the outside. That certainly does not seem like a stretch. With a day-off on Monday, the Nationals need to return to their home field on Tuesday and keep the momentum going.

Today’s win marked Michael Soroka’s first win since July 21, 2023. This was the Nationals first 3-game series sweep since July 19-21, 2024 vs. Cincinnati. This was the Nationals first 3-game road sweep since April 26-29, 2024 at Miami. This was the Nats first sweep of the Orioles since May 21-23, 2021, and the first sweep at Oriole Park at Camden Yards since May 28-30, 2018. The Nats took the season series against the Orioles with a 5-1 record.

For Martinez, he is reportedly in the final year of his current contract with a team option that has not been exercised. While we would not have expected him to lose his job during the season, the offseason holds many unknowns until we see how the Nats fare this year. The Orioles fired their manager, Brandon Hyde, before Saturday’s game, and then DFA’d their Saturday starting pitcher, Kyle Gibson, today. Some teams don’t care if you earned a Manager of the Year award in their uniform and took them to the playoffs in consecutive years. Baseball often will fire managers, coaches, and players during bad stretches. Some would call it scapegoating.

While the offense is scoring runs now, even hitting coach Darnell Coles looked happy in video we saw in the dugout today. His job looks safe now also. Most players on the ‘hot seat’ are most likely safe for the time being. As Hyde knows, baseball is all about “what have you done for me lately.”

There is still well over 110-games remaining in the season. Players will get more rope to turn their seasons around. After yesterday’s game, Josh Bell‘s WAR on FanGraphs had dropped to a -1.0. After today’s home run, that should improve some. Bell and Dylan Crews are the two biggest issues right now in the daily lineup. And what did Crews do? He hit a 3-run homer and had a single in today’s game. He was inches from another RBI hit that would have moved his batting average over .200. Bell finished his day batting .156. Baby steps.

Part of the issue of attitude and energy might be pointed at the coaching staff. We put up video from a week ago after we sourced that a player was upset that the coaching staff wasn’t backing up players on ball/strike calls. Video would seem to back it up and a few other videos too. MacKenzie Gore said this last weekend, “We’re frustrated. This was a tough homestand down here. We’ve got to be a little better as a group. We’re doing a lot of good things. We’re just not doing quite enough to win right now.” Here is a photo of Gore taking matters into his own hands and arguing after the inning with the umpire.

Interestingly enough, after Friday’s game, the Nationals’ dugout reporter, Dan Kolko, made a special point to say that Martinez and his coaches were all over an umpire after a key check swing call that was missed Friday night. From people who were sitting by the dugout, we were told that it was Sean Doolittle who was yelling at the umpire, and there was little emotion from Martinez other than some hand gestures and some less audible chirping. What is interesting is that this all might have blown up, if you believe that it started with a tweet, that got 93,000 views. Maybe some good came from it. The optics were bad.

We also made the point that Martinez still had the player’s support in the clubhouse. We reiterated that we never felt that the Nats’ manager was in jeopardy of getting fired. And the team meeting probably cleared some air. Maybe that was long overdue, and if we played any positive part to bring some issues to light, then good. Losing brings family squabbles, and winning brings family love. Let’s have more winning.

Baseball can get streaky for players and for teams. Most teams go through losing streaks. That happens. Often small things become larger in scope. Maybe a team meeting should have happened sooner rather than later. On May 6, the Nats were 17-19 and two more wins from .500, and then the losing streak happened.

The Nationals should be better than their current 21-27. They are well ahead of their 2019 pace, by the way. The bullpen does seem to be much better than where it was for the first 35-games of the season. If the Nats could get a long winning streak going and can keep winning series, they might get to a pace where they can put together a winning season. That is possible.

Has the team found something to make them player better as a team. “It’s awesome that we bounced back like that,” Crews said after today’s game. “Obviously, you don’t want things to go like they did in Atlanta, or even before that. But we’re going to go out here and flip the page, and that’s what we did. We’re going to use this as momentum going forward.” This is a young team figuring out how to win consistently.