Normally, players rarely look at it, their bodies and minds accustomed to 7 p.m. starts and early Sunday mornings. This season, the Nationals have needed to take a second look. They have played at the same time on consecutive days just once. This weekend, they followed a rare Friday late afternoon game with a loss in a 1:05 start on Saturday and a win in a 1:35 game on Sunday.

“These start times, you don’t know whether to eat, go to sleep, use the bathroom or shower. You have to set your alarm clock different days and times,” Manager Dusty Baker said. “It’s like working night shift, day shift, swing shift.”

The widespread consensus outside major league clubhouses seem to be that big league salaries more than compensate for inconvenient schedules. Excuses are as taboo in baseball as talking about a no-hitter while it’s happening.

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But the schedule these Nationals played through during the first weeks of the season should not be dismissed as a nonissue, because it has tested them. One day, they arrived to work at 2 p.m. The next, 11 a.m. The next, 9 a.m. The next, something different. In a sport based so completely on rhythm, the Nationals have hardly been able to establish any.

They emerged from those herky-jerky first two weeks 7-5, with a clicking offense and struggling bullpen. Start times will become more regular during the second half of April. The schedule, however, will test them even more.

After Sunday’s walk-off win over the Phillies, the Nationals boarded buses to Dulles Airport, then a plane to Atlanta, where they will have an off day on Monday. They will then play three games in Atlanta — all at 7:35 p.m., to avoid the traffic around newly minted SunTrust Park — and fly late Thursday to New York for a weekend series against the rival Mets. More often than not, opposing teams schedule “getaway day” games in the afternoon to avoid late-night travel. The Braves, who fly to Philadelphia after Thursday’s game, did not.

So the Nationals will arrive in New York early Friday morning for a weekend series capped by an appearance on Sunday Night Baseball, with an 8:08 p.m. first pitch. Teams dread the Sunday night designation, and the Nationals dread this one more than most. After a game that starts an hour later than most late getaway days, they must cross two time zones to Denver, where they play Monday night at 7:05 p.m. After four games in Colorado, they fly back home late Thursday to face the Mets again a few hours later. Ryan Zimmerman called it one of the worst road trips he has ever seen.

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“Got a terrible schedule. MLB did a great job for us,” Bryce Harper said, sarcasm evident on Sunday. “So really excited about that.”

Any overnight flight across time zones would cause trouble. An overnight flight to Colorado causes more. At high altitude, according to multiple reports in the Denver Post and the anecdotal evidence of Nationals players, sleep is not as deep, fatigue comes more readily, and recovery is more difficult.

“It’s going to wreck our bodies,” said Adam Eaton, whose initial reaction when asked about the upcoming road trip was “Holy Sh … nikes!”

Baker brought up this trip up weeks ago, identifying it as a week he would need to plan around. Last year, the pitching staff needed to call for reinforcements while in Colorado, and bullpens tend to get more use than usual.

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Baker also plans to craft his lineups around the travel and conditions. He has shown particular awareness when it comes to preserving the health of veterans such as Zimmerman, Jayson Werth and Daniel Murphy, and will have to decide how to handle Trea Turner, whenever the young shortstop returns from the disabled list. Maintenance and caution with injuries factor into Baker’s lineup-making at home, too.

But as Baker navigates this road trip, he and the Nationals will be trying to win and survive, particularly after that long trip to Colorado. As a result, non-regulars such as Adam Lind, Chris Heisey and Michael A. Taylor might see more time.

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“Hopefully we’ll be able to give some guys days off, and us bench guys can get a start here and there to keep everybody fresh,” Heisey said. “Some of the scheduling, like late games before traveling, are tough. It’s a lot of times good for a bench guy. You get a couple extra starts on a trip like that.”

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This trip will not be the only one that carries the Nationals through multiple time zones this season. Another three-city road trip carries them from Cincinnati to Los Angeles to Phoenix. Other trips bring them from San Diego to Houston, and Chicago to Miami, though both of those trips include off days between cities.

Each stretch of the season carries its own challenges; each portion of the schedule is grueling for its own reasons. But for the Nationals, this April stretch seems particularly unforgiving. After Monday, they do not have another off day until May.

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