Report: National ownership has been criticized as “inefficient” and “no direction”
The Nationals are participating in a change bureau offseason as the interview process is underway to find the team’s next president of baseball operations. The July shooting of former PBO Mike Rizzo and manager Davey Martinez marks a major change in the front desk of Nats, as Rizzo has been operating the baseball OPS division at Rizzo since 2009. Interim GM Mike Debartolo is a candidate for a full-time job, as well as several other outstanding executives from other teams associated with national searches.
Ideally, new employees will be able to turn things around for the Washington franchise until the end of their sixth consecutive loss season. The bigger picture question, however, is whether there is any meaningful twist if there is no clear commitment to ownership, and it seems that there is a lot of uncertainty about how the Lerner family runs the team exactly.
The Washington Post’s Barry Svrluga, Andrew Golden and Chelsea Janes provided some inspiration to Nats, the trio’s eye-opening to Nats with the work of “more than a dozen current or former nationals employees and others around the MLB”. The overall opinion is not positive, as the story outlines a lot of Cook situations, which leaves the nation without a single leadership voice.
“This is so efficient. It’s hard to make decisions in an orderly manner when there are a lot of people in the room“A source said. A former employee was still unclear during the decision-making process and wanted to know.”How about it [anything] Make a decision? Who has input? Who has influence and who doesn’t? I can’t tell you the first thing because I’m not in those meetings. ”
Ted Lerner (who died in 2023) initially bought the Nationals in 2006, and his son Mark became the official controller of the team in 2018. Mark Lerner is the name of most fans, associated with the “owner” of the National, but Mark is open in a broad sense because he is open away from the only family member on the team.
According to Svrluga/Golden/Janes, this seems to mean that as many as 10 people shared their opinions on the national decision. The list includes Mark Lerner, his sister Marla Lerner Tanenbaum, his siblings Bob Tanenbaum and Ed Cohen, the four grandchildren of Ted Lerner (Jonathan and Jacob Lerner, Michael and Jaclyn Cohen), and “to less”
The large number of people involved in the leadership structure is an obvious direct problem. A former national supervisor described this organizational structure as “confusion” and two different post sources called “Teams”No direction. “Another former employee said:More than once, I had a master telling me to do something and then say not to take time. ”
To understand the various characters involved in the family, Mark is well known to have the most obvious interest in baseball operations, and the story of the post states that Ed Cohen is “more involved in major business negotiations.” Marla Lerner Tanenbaum “the charity that oversees the national” and her husband Bob “are the least involved in daily operations.”
Several sources view the lack of a team president as a flaw, as no one in the Nationals held the position since Stan Kasten left the group after the 2010 season. The specific responsibilities of the team chair vary from club to club, depending on who’s role, but having someone from a baseball or business background in that position seems to be helpful for NAT because it means that it means filtering through many members of the Lerner family.
Bears general manager Carter Hawkins is the candidate because of the ongoing front-end search but has not met anyone, which could explain why Hawkins no longer considers the job. Svrluga/Golden/Janes reported that among the known candidates, former Padres/Diamondbacks GM Josh Byrnes was the only person known to have face-to-face meetings with Lerners.
Whether the new chief baseball supervisor can help the process remains to be seen, as there is no indication that the Nationals will look for higher stairs on the ladder to install the group’s president. From a more positive perspective, one source believes that Lernas recognizes the leadership vacuum in some way becauseOver the past 12 months, it has really forced them to think more thoroughly about how they structure things every day. I think there are some soul searches in progress and they are trying to figure out what is the best way to go ahead. ”
