PHILADELPHIA — On Monday night, Mase’s “Welcome Back” roared inside a clubhouse that had waited a long time to play it.

These Washington Nationals have a winning record after four games for the first time since 2018. They are two games over .500 for the first time since 2021. They are tied for the best record in MLB far before that is statistically meaningful, and yet it is emotionally resonant.

Luis Garcia Jr. has been a National for parts of seven seasons. He’s never had this.

“Perfect,” Garcia said, when asked for the vibe around the clubhouse. “That’s the only word. Perfect.”

They walked into Wrigley Field, wrote “Take the series” on a whiteboard in the clubhouse, then did it. They signed a pitcher who had not thrown a big-league pitch since 2022 to a guaranteed deal, handed him the ball in the never-easy Citizens Bank Park and watched him walk out with a win.

The Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies, postseason clubs last year, have been dispatched.

Here are the biggest takeaways from a club playing with confidence.

1. The lineups are weird (and they’re working)

No team in MLB has scored more runs than the Nationals. No manager in MLB is blindsiding local reporters with their lineups more than Blake Butera. And no manager has done a better job navigating the intricacies of those lineup decisions — who goes where, and what to tell the player about what it means — than Washington’s new skipper.

The Nationals have kept the line moving, posting a .969 OPS with two outs. They have gotten to pitchers early, posting an MLB-best .891 OPS in the first six innings, thanks in part to more information-heavy hitters’ meetings. They are doing so with CJ Abrams hitting sixth (after he never hit lower than third last year), with the trio of Andres Chaparro, Drew Millas and Garcia hitting second (Chaparro was optioned after three games) and with the two youngest players on the roster, Brady House and Daylen Lile, hitting in the No. 3 and No. 4 holes.

Why is it happening?

“Obviously, it has something to do with some analytics — it’s above my pay grade,” outfielder Jacob Young said.

OK, then why is it working?

“The biggest thing is they’ve communicated with us,” Young said. “If you’re not starting that day, it definitely doesn’t mean you’re not going to play that day.”

All 13 position players who have played for the Nationals have at least seven plate appearances across the team’s first four games. Last year, it took until Game No. 17 for that to be the case. They are shifting, and they are communicating.

The Nationals believe in the psychological upshot of that decision. They will almost certainly use over 40 players this year. Heck, Butera said, maybe over 60. But they are maximizing roles. They are prioritizing roster spots for players who can play multiple positions and platoon in such a way that they can maximize the lineup.

To oversimplify: They’re using more math to make the lineups. They’re using more feel to make sure the players feel empowered in their roles, even with plenty of roster churn expected over the next six months.

On Opening Day, president of baseball operations Paul Toboni spoke of “raising the floor” of the big-league roster. Getting more players truly in the mix is one way to do it.

(Claiming Joey Wiemer was another.)

2. The baseball is far from clean, but it is cleaner

Before Monday’s game, The Athletic’s Matt Gelb remarked that this was the most locked-in infield work he had ever seen a team participate in before a game.

Yep.

This staff has stressed relentlessly that in-game results are a byproduct of pregame work. At every base on Monday, Washington tested its fielders with a complicated array of one, two and three-hoppers. When players wrapped up with batting practice, they headed to the bases to test their base running (and more specifically, their reaction time).

Players have noted that the team’s pre-game work feels much more intentional than in years past. And while it is not close to entirely clean yet, they have cleaned up the controllables. Their reaction times all improved this spring, a byproduct of pre-pitch work.

Perhaps most striking was a moment on the bases Monday night, when they executed a first-and-third play — a play during which they erred time and time again in 2025 — that allowed José Tena to take home when Jorbit Vivas got caught in an intentional rundown between first and second base.

Welcome to Butera Ball 🎪 pic.twitter.com/QGEaQbJa1J

— Kev (@klwoodjr) March 31, 2026

“Vivas (ran) it the way that we wanted to run it, and he just got here,” Butera said. “That’s another credit to our coaching staff for just making sure these guys, as they come in, we’re continuing to teach them up and make sure they’re fully up to date on what we’re trying to accomplish.”

In a sense, it seems silly to zero in on that moment. The Nationals have also had collisions in the outfield, a star player who did not run hard out of the batter’s box and a group that has already run into outs on the bases. It is not all the way there yet.

But they have largely nailed the items they can efficiently correct.

“The coaching staff has done a great job of just being real with us and trying to make us better,” outfielder Lile said. “(First base coach) Corey Ray always stays on me about outfield stuff, working on my prep step, my reaction time, my baserunning. … They want us to reach our fullest potential.”

3. Early returns on pitching development are positive

On Opening Day, Cade Cavalli reared back and threw a new toy he had insisted was supposed to go to right-handed hitters. He threw it to Pete Crow-Armstrong, the decidedly left-handed man the Cubs just gave $115 million to. The pitch curled from the strike zone to his back heel and hit him in the foot. Crow-Armstrong swung anyway.

“Yeah, there’s certain lefties that the sweeper is better to go to than a curveball, and that’s just from the scouting report,” Cavalli said when asked about the pitch. “And that’s what we did.”

Cavalli comes into the season as one of the highest upside pitchers in the organization. His new sweeper breaks just a little harder than his already-nasty curve, in an effort to keep right-handers (who crushed him last year) honest.

He’s far from the only National trying something new in a big spot.

Miles Mikolas feels that he’s probably never had a decent changeup at any point during his career, and now he’s given the pitch about seven additional inches of vertical drop. Jake Irvin was a statistical darling after his start, thanks to a lower arm slot, and almost every pitch in his arsenal changed shape in some form or fashion. Brad Lord, a developmental success story if there ever was one, has also added a sweeper to keep hitters off-kilter.

They say pitching development takes less time than hitting development, which is why it should be encouraging to look at what Washington is trying in the bigs.