ATLANTA – The Nationals have thought that in order to snap their six-game losing streak they needed better at-bats from their lineup. Specifically, they needed to accept their walks, get the ball in the strike zone and score first.

Well, the Nationals were able to do all three of those things in the second of this four-game set against the Braves. But wouldn’t you know it, that wasn’t enough as the Nats took a 5-2 loss for their seventh straight defeat, marking their longest losing streak since July 7-16, 2022 (nine).

This night immediately started on a positive note as CJ Abrams smacked Spencer Schwellenbach’s first pitch of the game over the right field wall for a leadoff home run. And just like that, for only the fifth time in their last 17 games, the Nationals scored the first run of the contest.

“I wanted to start things off," Abrams said. "Stay aggressive on the fastball. It was a little out of the zone, but I put a good swing on it and it went out.”

Abrams’ 10th leadoff homer is second in Nationals history (2005-present) only to Trea Turner’s 14. Funny that both shortstops originally started their careers in the Padres system.

Then, wouldn’t you know it, James Wood drew a leadoff walk in the fourth and came around to score on Amed Rosario’s RBI single to give the Nats a 2-0 lead.

Surely the Nats had finally turned their fortunes around.

Not so fast.

“We couldn't sustain," manager Davey Martinez said. "Like I said, get good at-bats in between and carry it over. I mean, CJ led the game off with a homer. We scored another run, we got a hit-and-run base hit by Rosie, and then we just couldn't sustain our offense. So as I've been saying, in order for us to continue to do something offensively, we got to accept our walks. We got to swing at strikes. We took a lot of balls today that we probably shouldn't hit. For me right now, they're trying too hard. They're pressing a little bit. They're trying to create a win. We just gotta go out and play baseball. As I always talk about, we gotta just focus on little things. Get ahead and stay ahead.”

It was an emotional night for starter Michael Soroka, who made his 20th start at Truist Park, but his first as a visitor.

Soroka, who spent the first six years of his major league career in Atlanta, got to face his former team for the first time. But after a strong outing in his return from the injured list last week, the right-hander was forced out of this start after four innings by a high pitch count.

“I was excited," Soroka said. "Obviously, it's been a while since we were over here. Took that mound. And yeah, there's not a ton of guys over there that I played with all those years back then. But still, certainly some that I came up with and made good memories with. But I definitely wanted to give them my best tonight and felt like we did that. Just kind of got away from me a little bit and let the pitches rack up.”

With the early lead, Soroka held the Braves scoreless over the first three innings on a manageable 48 pitches. But an extended fourth inning cut his night short and let the Braves get right back in this one.

Three straight seven-pitch at-bats led to a strikeout, single and Drake Baldwin’s two-run home run to tie the game at 2-2 and energize the crowd of 32,725. Soroka then needed 12 more pitches to complete the 33-pitch frame and leave him at 81.

“Aggression and confidence that my stuff is good," Soroka said of the positives he took away. "I'm not gonna get beat. And obviously, that's a good recipe for success is getting ahead of guys. Obviously, not in that fourth inning. I fell behind a couple of guys and the inning got long. So make sure I keep doing that moving forward.”

Since he’s still fairly fresh off the IL, Martinez wasn’t going to push the 27-year-old any further. So he brought on starter-turned-reliever-turned-starter-turned-reliever Brad Lord for the fifth.

“Soroka has some good stuff today," the skipper said. "His pitch count was high. We had to take him out after the fourth. As I said, he's just coming off the IL, so I thought that was good enough for him.”

The Braves then promptly took the lead, thanks to a four-pitch leadoff walk, a single that should have been caught by Rosario at third base and an RBI single that should have been stopped by José Tena at second.

Lord gave up one more run in the sixth, though it was another one that probably should have been stopped. With runners on the corners and two outs, Eli White seemingly hit an offering twice, giving it a weird spin off the bat. That was enough to confuse Abrams at shortstop as he let the ball get past him, allowing the run to score.

“The line drive to Rosario was smoked. The ball knuckled on him at the last minute," Martinez said. "And then Tena just took a funny route. He was really trying to turn two right there. He just needs to catch the ball and try to just get an out. And the ball that was hit to CJ, man, I don't know what that ball did, but it just broke funny on him and it bounced funny on him.”

Jorge López surrendered one more run in the eighth. But it didn’t matter much since the offense couldn’t sustain the progress it made earlier in the night.

And so the suffering continued as the Nats fell nine games under .500.

"We're in a little bit of a funk," Martinez said. "We got to come out tomorrow and, like I said, continue to play baseball and do the little things. Do the little things correctly.”

“No one wants to lose. We want to win," Abrams said. "And we're going to start tomorrow, playing together. Just keep our heads up and keep going...”