LOVERRO: Nationals needed to draft a player who can help core stars now, not in the distant future

OPINION:

The Washington Nationals’ top pick in the 2025 draft, 17-year-old shortstop Eli Willits, wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of former general manager Mike Rizzo’s classy offer to buy a drink for Nats fans at two D.C. bars Monday night.

Willits might have been able to order a nonalcoholic drink. But he couldn’t sit at the bar with it. He would have had to drink his milkshake at a table with a supervising adult.

Willits may be able to buy his own drink at Walters Sports Bar, in the shadow of Nationals Park, by the time he arrives on the field there — just in time to say goodbye to the then soon-to-be free agent and All-Star outfielder James Wood.

Maybe the Lerner family should just open a bar tab for Washington baseball fans. Drinking heavily would seem wise when one of the biggest baseball decisions the Nationals have made in years seems to have dug a deeper hole for a franchise suffocating in losing.

The disappearing fan base is certainly weary of losing, so much so that while they took drinks paid for by Rizzo on Monday night, they didn’t offer much sympathy to the fired GM, who wasn’t actually at the bar bashes that he paid for.

“I thought it was a classy touch from a good guy,” said Bill Deere of Woodley Park. “I was at the Red Sox series and was appalled from what I saw on the field. The free beer helps with my pain and suffering. 

“After I saw that series, I wasn’t surprised that they decided to clean house. … After a while, maybe it’s just time for new voices.”

Kevin Donohoo from Capitol Hill thought Rizzo’s drink offer was “awesome. I think there’s always been a really good relationship between him and the fans. For him to pick up a beer for everybody is really cool.”

But firing him?

“The time was surprising,” Donohoo said, “but it’s probably for the best. Not to say anything bad against Mike, but they’ve been doing the same things and not getting the results we need. I think it was just time for somebody new to try something new.”

This was something new — drafting a 17-year-old out of high school when Kade Anderson, a highly rated 21-year-old left-handed pitcher out of the baseball factory that produced Paul Skenes, would go third to the Seattle Mariners.

Willits, I might point out, will cost the owners, the Lerner family, less than Anderson would have with the first pick.

“Eli was the top guy on our board,” said Nationals interim general manager Mike DeBartolo. “It’s one of those nice things where the scouts and the analysts see things exactly the same way and saw him as the best hitter in the draft, the best fielder in the draft with just great makeup, great work ethic and all the intangibles.”

Everyone saw things the same way? There wasn’t one adult in the room who stood and screamed, “Are you nuts? We are on the way to our sixth straight losing season. There’s a stud left-handed pitcher who just led LSU to the College World Series championship who would likely be ready for our rotation next year, and you’re talking about, what, 2030?

“Who will be left to watch”?

The driving force behind every baseball decision should be to make the most of the time the core group of young players — Wood, pitcher MacKenzie Gore, shortstop CJ Abrams and the Nats’ top pick of 2023, outfielder Dylan Crews — are in a Washington uniform before they leave for free agency.

The party line being touted is that the money they save on Willits will be used on lower-level, highly rated high school prospects they hope will pass on college offers. That position requires a leap of faith, based on what we know about the Lerners.

This is their back-of-the-baseball card:

The Lerners are bottom-feeders when it comes to spending on scouting, player development, slide rules, paper clips, whatever — among the lowest in baseball.

When Washington drafted Stephen Strasburg with the first pick in the 2009 draft, the Lerners had to put up a big signing bonus — $7.5 million. The Nationals were lucky enough to have the 10th pick in the first round as well. The Lerners ordered Rizzo to pick a below-slot player there to save money — closer Drew Storen, who signed for a $1.6 million bonus. The next four players taken signed for more money.

Something else noteworthy — as of now, Willits is not a Scott Boras client. It’s not clear if that was a contributing factor. If it was, it’s a new unwritten franchise policy for top picks. That would be ironic. There was a time when Boras was like a Lerner family member.

The late Orioles owner Peter Angelos tried this for about a dozen losing seasons before relenting and drafting Boras clients such as infielder Manny Machado and catcher Matt Wieters, building a five-year run of winning seasons and three playoff appearances.

(Wieters reminded me of yet another example of the Lerners kneecapping Rizzo. They bypassed their GM in 2017 and signed Wieters, a Boras client, to a two-year, $20 million contract. He appeared in 199 games for the Nationals, batting .230 with 18 home runs and 82 runs batted in.)

It’s a tempting road to travel — Boras will never let his young players sign long-term contract extensions, calling them “snuff contracts” — but he will typically have the best players as well. 

Wood is a Boras client. So is Gore. Maybe they’ll leave baseball cards behind for Willits.

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