This morning, Barry Svrluga, Chelsea Janes and Andrew Golden of the Washington Post did some great reporting on the chaotic nature of Nationals ownership group. In the piece, the Lerner regime is called “inefficient” and “directionless”. The story paints a picture of a group that lacks a plan and an environment with too many cooks in the kitchen. If you want to read the whole story, the link is here.
My main takeaway from all this is that the nature of the ownership group is going to make the GM search difficult. At times, there were as many as 8 people in the room when candidates were being interviewed. Having all of these voices in positions of power can paralyze the process. Quite frankly, this is very similar to the situation Chuck Todd described when he talked to us on the Federal Baseball podcast.
Honestly, this seems like good news for Mike DeBartolo. If all of these disparate factions of Nats ownership can’t come to a decision, which feels quite possible, DeBartolo is the fall back candidate. All of this is so bad for Nationals fans because this factionalism makes change even harder.
In the piece, the Post reported that there are some parts of the ownership group that want to hold on to the team, and others that want to sell. Mark Lerner comes across as a well meaning, but weak presence. The sources really think he loves the team, but he cannot get the Cohen and Tannenbaum families on the same page like his father could.
The Cohen and Tannenbaum factions are much more open to selling and are said to view the team as an asset. All of this chaos just leads to nothing happening. Decisions need to be made by consensus, and the decision makers are not on the same page.
Ultimately, the solution to this has to be a sale. There is just so much dysfunction in this ownership group that seems very hard to fix. Unless Mark Lerner can gain the control his father had, there seems to be no way for this to turn around. The lack of direction and slow decision making will likely cost the next regime as well.
Ted Leonsis is far from perfect, but at least he is a central leader who has final say. This infighting and factionalism is just killing the Nationals. At the end of the day, it is the fans who suffer the most from this mess. They are the ones who have to pay high prices to watch a poor product with a future that is not as bright as they were told it would be.
If this keeps up, you will see more empty stadiums like the ones we saw in the Marlins series a couple weeks ago. As someone who is in touch with Nationals fans all the time, you can sense the apathy is setting in. The 2019 World Series was great, but that good will has run out.
This story confirms what many Nats fans already knew. It is time for the Lerner family to sell the Washington Nationals to someone who will run it in a competent manner.