Owning up to failure

With Rizzo and Martinez gone, it's up to the Lerners to fix the Nationals' mess

Associated Press photo

Although it’s been two decades since the Lerners bought the Washington Nationals from Major League Baseball, it’s fair to say that for the first time, the family now actually owns the team.

Sunday’s questionably timed dual firings of manager Dave Martinez and general manager Mike Rizzo shifts the onus for reversing the team’s half-decade funk squarely onto the shoulders of Mark Lerner. He’s become the face of the ownership group since the death of his father, Ted, in 2023.

Ted Lerner’s absence triggered a paralysis among his scions, who have comfortably slid into the void left by Daniel Snyder as the most-criticized pro sports owners in D.C.

The Lerners made it known they were open to selling the team — until they changed their minds. Once amenable to spending competitively, they’ve become more frugal than a widow on Social Security.

Not coincidentally, a franchise that won more games from 2012-17 than any team except the Dodgers and claimed the 2019 World Seres has lost games since 2020 than anyone other than the Colorado Rockies.

As often happens, Rizzo and Martinez paid the price for that futility. And on the surface, those moves are justifiable.

Managers rarely survive three straight losing seasons, let alone the six Martinez seemed destined for, with a 37-53 record in what was supposed to be a breakthrough season. And his recent comments defending his coaching staff while seemingly throwing his players under the bus couldn’t have helped his cause. He’s well-liked and well-respected, but it’s a game of results, and he hasn’t delivered.

Rizzo’s case is a bit more complicated.

He joined the Nationals as scouting director in their second season in D.C. and moved up to GM three years later. He assembled the 2019 title team and made some shrewd trades — none better than the 2022 Juan Soto deal that landed three young All-Stars (CJ Abrams in 2024, James Wood and Makenzie Gore this year).

But building a contender requires developing home-grown players, through the draft and international signings. And that’s where Rizzo and the organization have failed.

Rizzo famously picked Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper No. 1 overall in 2009 and 2010, respectively, and nabbed Anthony Rendon sixth overall in 2011. But fantasy league players could have made those choices.

Since then, the Nationals’ first-round picks have included flameouts like Carter Kieboom (2016) and Elijah Green (2022), who floundered in Fredericksburg for three years. Recent first-rounders Brady House (2021) and Dylan Crews (2023) have made it to the big leagues, but none of the five starting pitchers Washington chose in the first round (or sandwich round) between 2016 and 2020 have made a big-league impact.

By stroke of luck, the Nationals have the first pick in this year’s draft, which begins Sunday. The Lerners clearly don’t trust Rizzo to choose wisely in a year without a clear-cut No. 1 prospect.

But is there reason to believe Mike DeBartolo, Rizzo’s right-hand man who succeeds him on an interim basis, would do any better? Or that he can navigate the upcoming trade deadline skillfully?

It should be noted that Rizzo was hamstrung in the past five years by the Lerners’ unwillingness to spend on free agents. Even when they were lavishing nine-figure deals on Jayson Werth, Max Scherzer, Ryan Zimmerman, Strasburg and Patrick Corbin, they deferred much of the money.

After Strasburg’s and Corbin’s deals became financial albatrosses, the Lerners went into full penny-pinching mode. They declined to allow Rizzo to pursue any free agent more accomplished than Nathaniel Lowe, depriving a team with several talented youngsters of the kind of valuable veteran leadership that Werth once provided.

No wonder Rizzo texted a Washington Post columnist that he had “navigated that ownership group for almost 20 years.”

Rizzo will land on his feet somewhere. Will the Nationals succeed without him?

Not unless the Lerners commit to hiring a qualified full-time GM and manager, and to spending on a level that will allow them to compete in a division with the deep-pocketed Mets, Phillies and Braves — especially now that the team’s long-running legal dispute with the Baltimore Orioles over MASN revenues has been resolved. Even if the Nationals don’t break the bank on free agents, they’ll eventually need to pay Wood, Gore and Abrams to keep them after they become arbitration-eligible.

If they can’t commit to that, the Lerners owe it to their growingly impatient fans to sell the team to someone who will.

Six years after they stood atop the baseball world, the Nationals are largely irrelevant. Rizzo and Martinez became the scapegoats for that futility. Now that they’re gone, the Lerner family has to own it.