“Make Baseball Fun Again.” The slogan on a hat donned through a certain former Washington Nationals outfielder on the begin of the 2016 season.
Though Bryce Harper has now departed for Philadelphia, the players that now don the curly-W are taking his advice as the crew is gambling a number of its most exciting baseball because supervisor Dave Martinez took the helm earlier than the 2018 season.
The Nats’ stars are exceeding their excessive expectations, the children are walking wild at the basepaths after they’re no longer hitting towering taters, and the clubhouse has inner leadership that was missing recently.
It has an excellent mix of players from distinctive backgrounds, specific a while, exceptional personalities, all blending as one. The togetherness of the group as one unit is something that now not many different teams can boast.
“Team chemistry is actually desirable,” Martinez said after the sweep of the Marlins remaining Thursday.
“You see them available. Like I said, each day they realize it’s a grind however, they pull f,or each different, they get prepared.”
Early on within the season, at the same time as they were one of the most banged up groups inside the National League, the Nationals have been seemingly finding new methods to lose games.
The bullpen changed into catastrophic, the pieced-together offense seemed to move missing each other sport, a number of the starters stumbled out of the gate, and masses of games were badly mismanaged using Martinez, with every button he pressed becoming the wrong button.
It all appeared to come to a head while the Nats suffered a brutal 4-sport sweep at the hand of the New York Mets that left several questions about the route of the franchise.
It wasn’t easy to observe the crew at some stage at that point with so many fundamental mistakes.
But because then, the Nationals aren’t doing an entire lot incorrect. They have the excellent prevailing percentage in baseball because May twenty fourth, the day once they were swept in Flushing and with all levels in their game clicking at the right time.
“We’re doing the whole thing right,” Matt Adams explained earlier than Thursday’s sport. “Showing as much as the ballpark ready to work and simply taking it recreation-with the aid of game.”
“We’re now not searching to some distance beforehand and stuff like that. Guys are showing up, running tough, and going out there and having fun playing the game.”
The clubhouse looks like a distinctive location than it became only some weeks ago. Everyone has loosened up as the wins preserve coming, and most importantly, the dancing in the dugout, which has been a massive hit with the group’s fans.
Even some of the veterans like Adams, Brian Dozier, and Kurt Suzuki were busting a few movements. We’ll see if Ryan Zimmerman joins in while he receives his subsequent homer. Seems not likely, but you by no means recognise…
Sure, the prevailing helps maintain the clubhouse morale up. Every clubhouse is extra fun while it’s prevailing, that’s hardly ever a huge secret.
But even at some stage in the dropping early on, Martinez became capable of maintaining the group’s heads up, continually emphasizing that things will turn round. And now, they’ve.
