OPINION:
Manager Dave Martinez had high hopes for his Washington Nationals squad in September — not a championship run or anything, but he wanted to see how his young team would respond in important games with a lot on the line — even if it was the opponents who had the most at stake.
In the slow process of trying to grow a winner in Washington, this was considered part of it — watching how his young roster learns to respond in the heat of the month.
“The biggest thing that I want them to learn is the mindset of playing in September and getting into October,” Martinez told reporters in the middle of September. “I tell these guys, we talked about this before, physically, you guys are all strong enough to do it. It’s the mental game right now. There are a lot of things you play for at the end of the year. Let’s focus on just staying where your feet are and staying in the moment.
“That’s the ultimate goal for us right now, is to understand that winning is important,” he said. “If we’re going to do what we want to do, and that’s to get to another championship, we got to learn how to win and win every day.”
Martinez said this after his team won three of four from the Miami Marlins.
After that, they collapsed, losing three straight to the New York Mets — who were playing meaningful September games.
The Nationals finished the month 10-16.
Oh, yes, and they punished their All-Star shortstop by sending him to the minors — when there were no more minor league games to play.
I’m guessing C.J. Abrams in a Chicago casino until 8 a.m. — five hours before a scheduled day game against the Cubs — was not the mindset Martinez was looking for.
This was no small thing, their September collapse. Washington just finished its fourth season of the rebuilding process, with a 71-91 record, matching last year’s mark.
That record in 2023 was considered progress. How they responded this September was a step back.
Like Martinez, general manager Mike Rizzo said last winter he wanted to see how the young players would react to September games, when teams are battling for a place in the postseason.
Maybe one of those teams could even be his own, if the 2024 Nationals had ended August just a few games shy of a wild-card spot. After all, the Arizona Diamondbacks won a wild card last year with just 84 wins.
Rizzo wanted to add some veteran presence in the clubhouse as part of that September equation — not one-year rentals trying to salvage their careers, but players of some substance with multi-year deals to lend some heft to their voices.
Rizzo and Martinez recognized the value of such veterans among a group of young players learning how to conduct themselves in a clubhouse — how to prepare for the business of baseball.
That can’t be Joey Gallo on a one-year deal, particularly when he missed half the season with injuries, or Jesse Winker on a one-year deal when he was trying to repair his own reputation, salvage his career and then was gone in a trade with the Mets at the end of July.
Perhaps a strong veteran presence in the room might have prevented the Abrams situation from spinning out of control.
Of course, this would require an ownership committed to a successful baseball organization. Instead, you have the Lerner family, which seems to just be barely hanging on to the baseball team they bought for $450 million in 2006 and treating it like one of their office buildings with 20% capacity.
According to sources, the family is divided about selling the franchise. They put it on the market in 2022, but as I wrote at the time, buying a box of paper clips from the Lerners is a difficult process, let alone a baseball team. Two years later, they announced the team was no longer for sale. But sources say the holdout against selling the franchise is principal owner Mark Lerner, who has health issues. It wouldn’t surprise me if the team winds up back on the block soon.
Until then, the front office has to hope that Mark Lerner finally delivers on the pledge he made to team announcer Dan Kolko at the end of the 2023 season about the family’s commitment to Rizzo’s team building.
“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.”
Those words were hollow, to put it kindly. We’ll see if they remain so this winter.
The Nationals have a shopping list. It includes a first baseman and a designated hitter, both with real home run power, plus a veteran pitcher. They can’t waste any more time. As we have seen with the departure of one home-grown star after another, the clock is already ticking on the expiration dates for James Wood, Dylan Crews, MacKenzie Gore and the rest of their young, talented players.
• You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.
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