WASHINGTON — When the Orioles regularly lost this badly and no one much cared, players lauded manager Brandon Hyde for being a steadying force who made sure his players knew every afternoon that they had the chance to erase whatever went wrong the previous day.

In the wake of Sunday’s 24-2 loss, Tuesday was one of those opportunities, and like all those that came before it this year, Hyde maintained that taking a positive view on things and simply persisting through this tough spell would help the team get back on track.

He said pregame that the Orioles are “a lot better offensively than they’ve shown so far” and that they’re “going to get this pitching stuff figured out and we’re going to be in good shape.”

All probably true, but on this particular night his faith was rewarded with another head-shaker: one hit mustered in a 7-0 loss to the Nationals. Maybe they’ll prove him right at the plate and on the mound in due time.

Before then, they need to tighten things up on the field. That’s supposed to be a non-negotiable, and it doesn’t feel like it is anymore.

“We don’t have a ton of experience defensively, and I think some of that shows at times,” Hyde said after the game. “Also, when guys aren’t hitting, especially as young players, sometimes the defense isn’t at their best — and that’s definitely an area that we need to get better at.”

Tuesday’s loss at Nationals Park might be digitally preserved in Cooperstown as the beginning of the MASN+ era, but it will not be featured on any future Orioles fundamentals tapes.

A not-so-exhaustive accounting of their defensive imperfections against Washington includes: Ryan Mountcastle and Dean Kremer nearly colliding in the first inning as the pitcher covered first on a ground ball that brought Mountcastle to the bag and he took himself for the out; Heston Kjerstad playing a José Tena looper down the left-field line into a triple in the second inning; Jackson Holliday bobbling but ultimately recovering a ground ball in the third inning; Cedric Mullins throwing to a vacant second base area on a single up the middle in the fifth inning to yield an extra base and ultimately allow another run to score; Kjerstad overthrowing the cutoff man earlier that inning without consequence.

Given their one hit managed off lefty Mitchell Parker and all the hard contact and home runs Kremer ceded around those plays, the lack of crisp baseball wasn’t their undoing. That’s how it’s been all season. There have been other scapegoats, and through this early stretch of inconsistent baseball, the below-average defense both metrically and optically hasn’t been a priority when it comes to scrutiny.

Allow me to say it should be a priority.

When asked before the game what experiences he draws on as he seeks to help the team find the consistency and form required to turn this season around, Hyde acknowledged the team’s starting rotation troubles and how “it’s not easy when you’re down early some games.

“We went through that our first few years here, quite a bit,” he said. “I don’t want to relive those experiences.”

You can understand why the details of those seasons have been replaced in my memory. Life has provided me countless joys — a wonderful marriage, two perfect children and seeing Taylor Swift in Paris for her first show on the Eras Tour after the new album came out chief among them — that mean I truly don’t remember how those Orioles teams of 2019, 2020 and 2021 were bad. I only remember that they were bad.

We aren’t reliving it, to both my and the manager’s relief. This feels different, because that was a bad team playing badly, and this is a good team that’s playing badly more often than it should.

These are the young stars who carried promise of premium offensive production at premium defensive positions, and it’s just not going the way it’s supposed to for a variety of reasons. Their starting pitchers aren’t winning at-bats, and as a result are creating early deficits that are hard to overcome. Their hitters, particularly the right-handed batters who are here to hit lefties, aren’t winning at-bats as often as they want to, either, and the Orioles aren’t doing a good job beating them as a result.

All that obscures a team that could beat itself with its inconsistent defense, if any of the other phases doesn’t beat them to it. It’s starting to feel like a problem. Though, to be fair, there are several.

“Things just kind of are piling up,” Kremer said. “The good ones are great, and the bad ones are not good. Things are kind of piling up, and that’s something we’re trying to work through.”