LOVERRO: Nationals go into new season hamstrung again by low payroll

OPINION:

You may have seen Washington Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo around town this winter waiting in line to purchase some Powerball and Mega Millions lottery tickets.

He may not have been looking to get rich. He might have been just trying to get some money to sign players. It wasn’t coming from anywhere else.

Spring training 2025 opened Wednesday in West Palm Beach, Florida, with pitchers and catchers reporting for physicals.

We’re now into Year 2 of the fantasy that Nationals owner Mark Lerner peddled to team announcer Dan Kolko in an interview at the end of the 2023 season.

“We are totally in on building this back to where we all expect it to be, to where our fans expect it to be,” Lerner told Kolko in a “Nats Xtra” interview. 

“It’s his call how he wants to fill the holes in the lineup. He comes to me when he is ready, whether it’s a player or a free agent or whatever. Whatever he desires he has the resources and he has always had the resources since the day we took over the team to build a winner.”

Well, the Nationals were ready to fill some holes this winter to add some free-agent upgrades to the young talent they have on this roster. They were ready to tap into the resources that Lerner promised were there.

The Nationals’ front office wanted to add some power — maybe 60 home runs — to the lineup at first base and designated hitter. One of their prime targets was first baseman Christian Walker, the Arizona Diamondbacks Gold Glover and slugger who hit 26 home runs and drove in 84 runs in 479 at-bats. The year before, Walker hit 33 home runs and drove in 103 runs.

Washington was in on Walker, according to sources, and their talks with the free agent had progressed well. But when it came time to put up the money, those “resources” weren’t there. Walker signed a three-year, $60 million deal with the Houston Astros.

Rizzo recovered, and, as he has done so many times, made the most of it by trading for Nathan Lowe, a former Silver Slugger winner and Gold Glove first baseman with the Texas Rangers in exchange for reliever Robert Garcia. He is a solid addition to the lineup who hit 16 home runs and drove in 69 runs in 565 plate appearances. 

It’s a step down from Walker and not the reinforcement the Nationals from office hoped to add. But it fits the Lerners’ baseball business model: Run the baseball team as if it were a vacant, rundown office building.

For designated hitter, they brought back a member of the 2022 Washington team, Josh Bell, who, with Miami and Arizona, hit 19 home runs, drove in 71 runs and batted .249 in 603 plate appearances. He’s here on the Nationals special — a one-year, $6 million contract. Last year it was Joey Gallo on a one-year, $5 million deal.

Washington has an exciting core of young position players — James Wood, Dylan Crews and others, plus young pitchers like MacKenzie Gore, Jake Irvin and more. There is much to look forward to.

But building this roster to take the next step requires some veteran talent and leadership in the clubhouse to complement the prospects — leadership that will be here longer than one season. Management wanted to take that step last offseason — to give their young players the opportunity to compete in meaningful games in August and September and to learn the lessons of pennant races. They put value on those lessons. Joey Gallos on one-year deals doesn’t accomplish that.

Perhaps if there had been a more permanent veteran presence on last year’s roster, you wouldn’t have had your young All-Star shortstop in a Chicago casino at 8 a.m. on the day of an afternoon game in September.

The Lerners’ demoralizing discount financial practices go beyond the playing field, where the 26-man roster has a payroll of $65 million. Washington is in the bottom third in spending in nearly every category. Supposedly, the owners claim they are losing $100 million a year. Yet Major League Baseball brought in a record $12.1 billion in revenues last season. Someone is making money.

I know the Lerner family has probably taken a bath in its real estate business. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell testified before the Senate last summer that the commercial real estate risk “will be with us for some time, probably for years.”

It’s unfortunate, but the Lerners chose to buy a baseball team. They had a remarkably successful run from 2012 through 2019, with four National League East Division titles, a wild card berth and a World Series championship. Since then, they have chosen to pin their hopes on the ability of Rizzo to assemble a winning team of kids and spare parts.

They play in a division where the Mets, who made it to the NL championship series last season, added former Washington star Juan Soto. They play in a division where the Phillies, with three straight postseason appearances and an All-Star roster that includes former Nationals great Bryce Harper, added Miami pitching phenom Jesus Luzardo to their rotation. They play in a division where the Atlanta Braves won five straight division crowns and are two years removed from a World Series title.

It requires a commitment to compete far greater than the Lerners have been willing to make.

Yet Mark Lerner has insisted on hanging onto the team, in a split among family members who want to sell, sources said. 

But he is 71 and not in good health. I don’t quite understand the reluctance to go all in on the dedication to win. Or, in his own words, the “resources” to “build a winner.”

• You can hear Thom Loverro on “The Kevin Sheehan Show” podcast.