WASHINGTON — A few days ago, as Brandon Hyde remarked on the poor at-bats many players on his team were taking, he quickly made a caveat. Cedric Mullins, the Orioles manager said, stood out for all the right reasons.

“He’s competing every at-bat, every pitch,” Hyde said Tuesday after the series-opening loss to the Washington Nationals. “There’s a lot of fight in his at-bats. Hope guys are watching.”

Two days later, the Orioles are back in the win column for the first time since Saturday. To celebrate a series-ending 2-1 win against the Nationals as a major breakthrough would be premature for a team that has lacked consistency. But, as Hyde suggested, Mullins remains worth watching every night.

His plate appearance in the fifth inning showcased why — the fight that Hyde commended was on display again. In a left-on-left matchup with MacKenzie Gore, Mullins fell in an 0-2 hole. He then battled to work the count full, and on the ninth pitch of the plate appearance, Mullins laced a go-ahead single through the infield.

“When Ceddy’s locked in, he can carry us,” said infielder Ryan O’Hearn, who scored on the base hit. “I know he can keep doing what he’s doing and put the team on his back.”

The Orioles are waiting for that sort of approach to click up and down their lineup, and if it hadn’t been for left-hander Cade Povich’s superb start, the plate appearance from Mullins may have been more of a footnote in another lopsided loss. Instead, Povich rebounded from his last outing to produce one of the best starts of his career, and Mullins was the right man up at the right time against Gore.

The Orioles entered hitting .168 against lefties. And Gore allowed only four hits in six innings while striking out eight. But Ramón Laureano lashed a double in the fifth to the left field wall and O’Hearn’s subsequent single knotted the score.

Then came the extended battle with Mullins, which Hyde called “maybe the at-bat of the year.”

“It’s just understanding how difficult that position is and just competing your butt off in that moment,” Mullins said. “Not trying to do too much. ... In that moment, yeah, 0-2 pretty quick. I thought I was seeing it pretty good, so sticking with the plan.”

Added Hyde: “He’s not the most talkative guy, but he’s willing everybody with the way he’s playing and the way he’s playing defense, taking control of center field, stealing bases, doing everything.”

And, for the first time this season, the Orioles won a game in which they scored fewer than three runs.

The two runs in the fifth left Povich in line for the win at the end of 6 2/3 strong innings. He allowed a run in the second when Amed Rosario doubled and Josh Bell singled, but he held Washington off balance from then on.

Povich lacked any semblance of command in his last outing against the Cincinnati Reds, during which he walked five batters, allowed three home runs and conceded seven runs in 3 1/3 innings. It was part of a troublesome weekend for Baltimore’s rotation.

On that evening, Povich’s four-seam fastball, curveball and changeup were sprayed around the yard at high exit velocities. He threw his sweeper 14% of the time against the Reds, slightly down from his season average of 18.4% but still higher than his usage of that offering in 2024 (13%).

On top of improved command, Povich’s biggest difference Thursday in Washington was his pitch mix. He used his sweeper more than ever before, against righties and lefties, and through five innings, five of his eight whiffs had come via the sweeper. He finished with 31% of his 87 pitches as sweepers, and he buried his changeup and curveball usage.

“When you get four lefties in there, the sweeper’s going to come into play a lot more,” Povich said. “A lot of these games in the past, teams usually stack righties. I think that’s part of it a little bit. I think part of it was just how it was playing today, too, even to righties. We were just really able to mix and match everything to both sides.”

Those 27 sweepers were the most in any of his 21 MLB starts. And behind it Povich followed Tomoyuki Sugano as the only Orioles pitchers to work into the seventh inning.

“We get good starts, we’ve got a good shot,” Hyde said. “And these guys are gonna start swinging the bat better.”

And after Povich, Yennier Cano, Gregory Soto and Félix Bautista combined to finish the narrow victory. Bautista allowed an infield single, and pinch runner Nasim Nuñez made a high-pressure inning more difficult by stealing second and reaching third with two outs.

The outcome might’ve been different had catcher Adley Rutschman not blocked a splitter in the dirt from Bautista. A wild pitch there would’ve tied the game in the ninth and served as a gut punch for a team that needed to salvage a win from a series loss.

“That’s the kind of player he is,” Hyde said of Rutschman, whose stop allowed Bautista to force a game-ending groundout for his third save of the year.

Much of the return to winning can be pinned to Povich and Mullins — on one for rebounding and the other for producing another must-watch at-bat.

This article has been updated.