Spring Training history for the Washington Nationals goes back 21 years now to its beginnings in 2005. The setting was a town about an hour east of Orlando called Viera near the Melbourne beaches on the Atlantic Ocean side. Yes, that town near Cape Canaveral where they launched rockets. The inaugural year was a year of getting to know each other. Everything felt kind of rented and not permanent. Viera felt as temporary and contrived as RFK Stadium since we all knew that the team would be out of there in a matter of years.

A year later, Ryan Zimmerman entered his first Spring Training before the 2006 season, and the Virginia local guy immediately became a fan favorite. After a few years, he made it known that he was not a fan of the long preseasons in Florida, the wins don’t count, the stats don’t count for players like him, so let’s get north and start the season.

As the face of the franchise during most of his time as Employee No. 11, that sentiment of how Zim felt about Spring Training was likely shared with much of the clubhouse. Certainly the team’s former television network didn’t see much value in Spring Training either. But is this year different? Is 2026 the most important Spring Training in the 20+ years since the Nats came to DC?

We know that 2005 mattered to the fans. I got down there to see a Zach Day start and got autographs from Nick Johnson, Brad Wilkerson, Ryan Church, and Jamey Carroll. (I was not impressed with my fellow autograph hounds, I felt like a kid again with a team to root for, but that was the last time I’ve asked anyone for an autograph.) By the time I got there they had one and only one Nats themed souvenir in the team store, a generic Grapefruit League shirt, it’s still in my drawer, last worn for World Series game three. 

But did 2005 matter as much for the players? Probably not. Certainly there were guys trying to make the team and earn starting spots, and they were all curious about how they would be received in their new home. But the team wasn’t expected to win. It was the calm before the storm.

To begin 2006, the team still had no true owner as MLB was taking closed bids for the team and finally sold it mid-season to Ted Lerner. And then from 2007-2010 the team was in a full rebuild mode per the Stan Kasten “plan.” Of course everyone wanted to do their best, the stakes were high for guys trying to earn a major league paycheck, but there was no thought of a playoff run.

Then prior to the 2011 season, it all seemed to change when the team brought bought Jayson Werth and signalled a new era. Suddenly Spring Training had the excitement of a team with heightened expectations. The team had Stephen Strasburg recovering from TJ surgery, and Bryce Harper was in the minor league system, and Anthony Rendon was drafted that year. The last Expo, Ian Desmond was looking like a star in the infield with Zimmerman, and Werth and Harper would man two-thirds of the outfield. Wilson Ramos was the answer at catcher, and Jordan Zimmermann with Strasburg were two aces in the deck.

Top draft picks and free agents were coming in — and the team was spending huge in payroll. But once again, Spring Training was just the precursor to the real season, and they were itching to get things going under Davey Johnson. Winning brought new crowds and attendance finally got above crowds of 30,000 on average in the winning years — but still far from what the top teams were doing in attendance.

In 2017 the team moved from their original spring home in nothing special Space Coast Stadium in Viera to the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches, as it was known at the time. Modern and fancy, with double fences to separate fans from the players, and a tunnel to the dugout so that the players could come and go without walking in from the bullpens past the crowd.

It was a year later in 2018 that Dave Martinez rode in on his camel and started the trust circles. The message being to keep things light before getting started with the long grind of the season.

The Spring Training of 2020 began with the post World Series glow, but that didn’t last long, games were cancelled, players were sent home as COVID hit hard. All of the positive momentum from the World Series was erased by the virus that swept the globe. And the era of winning baseball in Washington, D.C. was erased with it. Have there been any memorable spring moments since then? Guys were competing for roster spots and starting positions, but the team was in a downward spiral — and the team aged out — and nobody could have foreseen what would happen as the team was gutted along with a lot of the spirit of the fan base.

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Back to the question, is 2026 the most important Spring Training since the Nats came to DC? Certainly not based on expectations for the team to make a playoff run. But how about for the direction of the franchise?

Has there ever been a spring where more starting positions are up for grabs? We have more outfielders than outfield spots, twice as many starting pitchers as will fit in a standard five man rotation. Who is starting on the right side of the infield? Who will be catching on Opening Day?

Beyond that, the bullpen and the bench are wide open too. Young players looking for their first MLB shot are competing against older guys who are trying to fight their way back into the league. Am I wrong or are there more roster spots to be determined than in any other season since baseball returned?

So players are fighting for their jobs, that’s what is supposed to happen, and that is what Spring Training is all about. This year we have coaches trying to prove they belong too. Plenty of guys with pro baseball experience, but also college coaches making the jump. There are Driveline and “baseball lab” gurus trying to show they belong in the big leagues as coaches also. The pressure is on. When you do things differently like Paul Toboni is doing — you usually are a groundbreaker for a new course or the sisyphian on the road to failure. You just hope Toboni’s path is of the former. The latter usually gets fired in the corporate world.

“The [players] have an opportunity in front of them to write their own chapter. … We don’t think our players are even close to finished products. We think every player here has another gear to get to.”

— Nats manager Blake Butera via @BBisntBoring

Fans have been promised that the players are going to improve based on the new development monster, what if a player struggles? The good news is that the era of “it’s never on coaching” came to an end as those were words actually spoken by manager Blake Butera’s predecessor. Butera preaches accountability from himself, his coaches, and the players.

Even back in DC in the offices at Nationals Park the pressure is on. The Nats have brought in a bunch of guys on minor league contracts, do you think that Toboni is tracking which members of his staff picked which players? Who brought in the hidden gems and who brought in the duds. 

Spring Training wins don’t matter. But individual processes are what are judged in the preseason. In the real season, it all counts. But imagine if this team starts out 2-8? All the fans with the Sell The Team shirts will be certain to pounce on that like moths attracted to light. The opportunists chance to bash the team.

What does the ticket rep trying to sell a 20-game plan say when the potential buyer responds that they can get cheaper seats via resale? No one cares about going .500, but does Butera get a phone call about his lineups if the front office feels they need to avoid being embarrassed?

In conclusion, the answer is a definitive yes, and it all starts, right now.