A long-standing baseball adage calls Washington “first in war, first in peace, but last in the American League.”

Two teams called the Washington Senators fit that image well, while the current Washington Nationals began life as the Montreal Expos, a National League expansion team, in 1969 before moving to the nation’s capital in 2005.

The Nationals rode the wild-card to a surprise pennant in 2019 and went on to win their first world championship – and the second in the city’s history – that fall.

Dave Martinez, the former outfielder who managed that team, has navigated rougher waters since, with injuries and ill-considered signings opening the cellar door again, but survived an ongoing conversion to a young and hungry club.

According to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, Martinez has agreed to a two-year contract extension that also contains a club option for 2026. Rosenthal reports a similar deal in the works for general manager Mike Rizzo.

Although contract terms of managers and front office executives are rarely revealed, reports indicate that Martinez made $1 million when first signed but earned as much as $7.5 million over his latest three-year contract, which included a 2023 club option that was exercised (Cot’s Baseball Contracts).

Entering play Tuesday, the Nationals stood 57-68 but had won seven of their last ten and were closing a once-sizable gap on the fourth-place New York Mets.

At 23½ games out, they had no chance to catch the front-running Atlanta Braves, the first team to reach 80 wins this year, but were no longer pushovers either.

The Rizzo-Martinez tandem has been together since 2017, when the GM hired Martinez to succeed current Houston pilot Dusty Baker, whose Washington contract was not renewed. All of Baker’s coaches were also let go, allowing Martinez to build his own coaching staff.

The team finishing second with an 82-80 mark in 2018, then followed up with a historic campaign.

When the Nats started the 2019 campaign with a 19-31 mark, rumors circulated that a managerial change was imminent. But the highly-regarded Martinez stayed, the team rebounded, and got red-hot when it counted most.

Before Martinez brought youth and stability to the job, Washington had a string of managers, several lasting two years or less.

Frank Robinson came with the team from Montreal but was followed by Manny Acta, Jim Riggleman, John McLaren, Davey Johnson, Matt Williams, and Baker. Johnson, Williams, and Baker (twice) won NL East titles and both Johnson (2012) and Williams (2014) were named NL Managers of the Year.

Martinez, 53, played for the Expos before spending 10 years as bench coach in Chicago (Cubs) and Tampa Bay under innovative manager Joe Maddon.

At different times, he has guided teams of veterans and rookies, working with Rizzo to repair the damage caused by the free-agent departure of slugging third baseman Anthony Rendon, who signed with the Los Angeles Angels, and the ill-fated decision to keep top starter Stephen Strasburg, MVP of the 2019 World Series.

Like Rendon, the pitcher got a seven-year, $245 million contract immediately after winning the world championship.

Strasburg’s subsequent inability to stay healthy crippled the team, which had depended on him heavily, and ultimately resulted in the trades of Max Scherzer, Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber, Jon Lester, and Juan Soto, among others, for an influx of talented young players.

Washington’s promising kiddie korps now includes Josiah Gray, MacKenzie Gore, Keibert Ruiz, CJ Abrams, and not-quite-ready-for-prime-time James Wood, Jarlin Susana, Robert Hassell III, Brady House, Elijah Green, and Dylan Crews.

Martinez had been in the final year of his contract.

Rizzo, in a similar situation, is expected to return in a similar deal. He has longevity on his side: he’s been general manager for the Nationals since 2009 and has since become president of baseball operations for the Lerner family, which acquired the club from Major League Baseball for $450 million in 2006.

Since the death of 97-year-old owner Ted Lerner earlier this year, there has been talk that the team might be put up for sale by his son Mark. But the renewals of Martinez and probably Rizzo indicate both are appreciated and protected by the current regime.