LOVERRO: Nats flail while Lerners fail

OPINION:

The Washington Nationals just endured a six-game losing streak of historic proportions — scores like 16-9, 14-3 and 16-7.

I guess it’s a good thing the owners fired general manager Mike Rizzo and manager Davey Martinez a few weeks ago.

The Lerners didn’t want to fire Martinez. They wanted Rizzo to do it. And they didn’t want to fire Rizzo, either, at least not until his contract was up at the end of the season. The only thing the Lerners hate more than having to pay people to work is to pay people not to work.

But Rizzo wouldn’t do their bidding. He wouldn’t fire Martinez, sources said. That’s why the GM got fired in a move that stunned many in baseball, less than two weeks before the MLB draft.

Rizzo believed the problems with the team were not the manager’s fault. Instead, he saw the problem that anyone with any baseball knowledge could see — they didn’t have enough good players.

Now, it was Rizzo’s job as GM to acquire those players, but this was the price you pay for several years of free agents with one-year contracts found at the bottom of the barrel due to the Lerners’ refusal to spend money on players — a meager $65 million on this year’s active payroll and $60 million in each of the previous two seasons.

Now you have Mike DeBartolo promoted to GM, a pencil pusher who had never made a trade in his life until he dealt away one group of bodies for a larger, unproven group of bodies at the trading deadline. Excuse me, traded for prospects — invisible players. Fans love prospects. They haven’t failed yet, so there is hope — as if Andrew Friedman, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, would trade two future major leaguers for Alex Call.

Better get used to DeBartolo. I doubt he’s going anywhere. Don’t expect some high-powered search for his replacement. Manager Miguel Cairo, too, though he may have options, as he is highly regarded within the game.

Both may wind up with one-year contracts — like the business of baseball itself. The consensus is that the game is heading for a 2027 shutdown. 

A lockout by the owners is looming as momentum builds for a salary cap. Baseball is the only major sport without such a spending limit, with a luxury tax used instead to try to limit spending imbalances among teams. Needless to say, with the New York Mets at a $323 million payroll versus the Miami Marlins’ $67 million (full payrolls, not just active rosters), the luxury tax hasn’t been very successful.

But the owners are fooling themselves one more time if they think they can break the players’ union and force a deal that includes a salary cap by locking the players out. Bryce Harper was speaking for the entire membership — not just his agent, Scott Boras — when he told Commissioner Rob Manfred, who is making a point of visiting with teams to talk about labor differences, in the Phillies clubhouse last month to “get the f—- out of our clubhouse” if Manfred wanted to talk about a salary cap, ESPN reported.

For those holding out hope that the Lerners will sell the team soon — chants of “sell the team” have grown at Nationals Park — a lockout pretty much kills that hope. Despite the proposed sale of the Tampa Bay Rays, no one is buying a baseball franchise with such an uncertain labor future. And the value of a franchise would increase if indeed the owners were able to win a salary cap in a labor war. 

The Nationals are on their way to their sixth straight losing season, which matches the first six seasons of Lerner ownership from 2006 through 2011. The team is likely heading for a seventh straight losing season next year. After that, no baseball.

That would be a welcome development for the Lerners, who have told people privately they are losing millions operating the franchise. The best thing that could happen for them is no baseball. There would be no paychecks to sign. No games to lose.

• Catch Thom Loverro on “The Kevin Sheehan Show” podcast.