Washington’s 3-0 win over the second -place Braves sends the Nationals to the playoffs for the second time in three years.

Washington’s 3-0 win over the second -place Braves sends the Nationals to the playoffs for the second time in three years.

Washington’s 3-0 win over the second -place Braves sends the Nationals to the playoffs for the second time in three years.

Take it in, because nothing is guaranteed. What happened Tuesday night here at Turner Field — streams of players with “Washington” emblazoned on their chests piling out of the dugout onto the field and onto each other — doesn’t automatically mean more scenes like it in the future. Might have seemed that way in 2012. Last summer taught us to cherish each time.

So savor it all. Drew Storen’s two pumps of his fist just before Adam LaRoche recorded the final out. The sloppy jump-and-bump of outfielders Jayson Werth, Denard Span and Bryce Harper. The hugs from owners to players and players to staff, and the 3-0 victory over the Atlanta Braves that brought the 2014 National League East title for the Washington Nationals.

With that, the bust of 2013 turned into a blip. Now, last year’s lost season is the middle of a sandwich made with sugar-sweet bread, the less palatable part of the phrase “two division titles in three years.” Suddenly, it doesn’t seem so disappointing. Now, use those division titles as data points. Do we have a trend?

“The plan is we keep this thing going for the long term, the long haul, and to be competitive for a long time,” General Manager Mike Rizzo said in a delirious clubhouse, a combination of Miller Lite and Korbel dripping off his bald pate. “We looked ourselves in the mirror in ’13. We weren’t a perfect team, but we thought we had a good foundation, that we were a good franchise.”

Think about that for a moment. This good foundation, this good franchise, from where there was — rather recently — nothing. Maybe this is a good time to remind everyone that 10 years ago this very night, Washington did not yet have a baseball team. And that in the winter of 2004-05, the franchise had its accounting operations in Montreal, its baseball operations in Florida, its upper management at a Georgetown law firm and the guts of a fly-by-night, do-everything staff in trailers in the parking lots of RFK Stadium. Until now, the idea of sustained baseball success in Washington was somewhere between a blind hope and an abstract theory, with obstacles to overcome that should not soon be forgotten.

Nationals players celebrate their second National League East title in three years after a 3-0 victory over the Atlanta Braves on Tuesday. (The Washington Post)

They let go their first manager, a proud Hall of Famer, when he very much wanted to stay. They fired one manager midseason, a general manager in spring training, became embroiled in an age-changing scandal in the Dominican Republic, had another manager walk out on the job, and were for a time a downright laughingstock. They deserved it, every bit of it.

“We were below an expansion franchise,” Rizzo said. “The place was gutted. We had to start from below zero.”

Now they have a general manager who has the respect of scouts because he did their job so well for so long and has the respect of his peers because of the organization he has helped build. They have a manager, Matt Williams, who has the respect of his players because of how he played the game and how he has handled them in his first go-round. They have an organization at which players no longer laugh. Quite the opposite. They might actually be respected.

“It’s opposite ends of the spectrum,” said right fielder Jayson Werth, the man who became the Nationals’ first major free agent signing. “About as far as you can come.”

How far, exactly? One scout here Tuesday said this: “I think Washington has the best roster, one through 45, of anybody in baseball.” Translation: There are already the pieces that make up a division champion, and there are more pieces on the way from the minors.

This is a franchise deep enough that the man who pitched seven innings of scoreless ball in the clincher over the Braves — Tanner Roark, he of the 2.85 ERA — might not have a spot in the postseason rotation. This is a franchise deep enough that Ryan Zimmerman, its face for so long, could have a difficult time finding a spot when he returns from his hamstring injury at least in part because his eventual replacement at third base, Anthony Rendon, developed right under his nose. This is a franchise deep enough that Rafael Soriano, who earned $22 million to be the closer over the past two years, faltered badly over the past month, and he can be replaced by a 27-year-old who once saved 43 games in a season himself, Storen.

Zimmerman spent Tuesday night not drinking it in and slurping it down with his teammates, but in an apartment in Viera, Fla., where he is rehabbing his injury. “Hopefully, I’m helping us get to the point where we have a few more celebrations like that,” he said by phone.

The Post Sports Live crew makes a case for Nationals manager Matt Williams to win manager of the year for the National League after leading the team back to the playoffs. (Post Sports Live/The Washington Post)

But as he gets himself prepared for the postseason, the Nationals’ first draft pick also learned a lesson about the only organization he has ever known. His rehab Tuesday included five at-bats in a game with Nats minor leaguers, 20-year-olds who want to get where he is.

“Being down here now and seeing the instructors, I can see how these kids become so good,” Zimmerman said. “These coaches care about them. And now they’re probably all watching, and looking at the celebration on TV and seeing how cool it is, and it makes them want to work even harder.”

There has, too, been a major development off the field. Now, there are fans — curly W-wearing, watch-every-game-till-they-have-to-go-to-bed fans — who aren’t scarred by 33 years without baseball, who never needed to travel up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway to see the “home” team, who will one day be able to tell their kids they watched Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper in their primes at old Nationals Park, passing stories down without a gap that left an entire generation without baseball.

Those fans, too, have developed the way fan bases should. There was, of course, the pain of back-to-back 100-loss seasons, and the answer to the trivia question “Who threw the first pitch in Nationals Park history?” will always and forever be Odalis Perez. But there was also the knife-in-the-heart of the 2012 NL Division Series against St. Louis, when a trip to the NL Championship Series was guaranteed until it wasn’t.

Where this will all lead — in a month or a year or a decade — we don’t yet know. What we do know, though, is that this division title was both hard-earned and that it assures nothing going forward. But pick a team to root for over the next five years. Which one is set up better to provide more moments like Tuesday?