Critical report emerges on Nationals' 'directionless' ownership

The Washington Nationals are embarking on a transformational offseason, as the interview process is underway to find the team’s next full-time president of baseball operations.  The firings of former PBO Mike Rizzo and manager Davey Martinez in July marked a major sea change in how the Nats’ front office was run, as Rizzo had been running the baseball ops department since 2009. Interim GM Mike DeBartolo is a candidate for the full-time job, and several other prominent executives from other teams have been linked to the Nationals’ search.

Ideally, a new hire would be able to turn things around for a Washington franchise that is staggering to the end of its sixth straight losing season. The bigger-picture question, however, is whether any meaningful turnaround is possible without clear commitment from ownership, and there appears to be plenty of uncertainty about how exactly the Lerner family is operating the team.

An eye-opening piece from the Washington Post’s Barry Svrluga, Andrew Golden, and Chelsea Janes sheds some light on the Nats, as the Post trio spoke with “more than a dozen current or former employees of the Nationals and others around MLB familiar with how the Lerners run their team.”  The overall opinion isn’t positive, as the story outlines a too-many-cooks situation that has left the Nationals without a singular leadership voice.

"It’s so inefficient. When there’s that many people in the room, it’s hard to come to decisions in an orderly fashion,” said one source.  One former employee is still unclear on the decision-making process, wondering “How does [anything] get decided?  Who has input into it?  Who is influential and who’s not?  I couldn’t tell you the first thing because I’m not in those meetings.”

Ted Lerner (who passed away in 2023) initially bought the Nationals in 2006, and his son Mark became the team’s official control person in 2018. Mark Lerner is the name most fans associate with being the Nationals’ “owner” in a broad sense, but Mark has been open about the fact that he is far from the only member of the family with a say in the team’s operations.

Nationals must narrow down leadership

This seemingly means that up to 10 different people share input into the Nationals’ decisions, according to Svrluga/Golden/Janes.  The list includes Mark Lerner, his sister Marla Lerner Tanenbaum, his brothers-in-law Bob Tanenbaum and Ed Cohen, four of Ted Lerner’s grandchildren (Jonathan and Jacob Lerner, Michael and Jaclyn Cohen), and “to a lesser extent” Mark’s wife Judy and Mark’s sister Debra Lerner Cohen.

The sheer number of people involved in the leadership structure is an obvious immediate issue.  A former Nationals executive described this organizational structure as “chaotic,” and two different Post sources referred to the team as “directionless.”  Another former employee said that “more than once, I had an owner tell me to do something and then had another say not to spend time on it.”

For some insight into the various personalities involved within the family, Mark is known to have the most overt interest in baseball operations, while the Post story notes that Ed Cohen “is more heavily involved in major business negotiations.”  Marla Lerner Tanenbaum “oversees the Nationals’ philanthropic arm” and her husband Bob “is the least involved in day-to-day operations.”

No president, no problem for Nationals?

The lack of a team president was noted as a flaw by several sources, as the Nationals haven’t had anyone in the position since Stan Kasten left the organization following the 2010 season.  The specific responsibilities of a team president vary from club to club, depending on who is in the role, but having someone from either a baseball or business background in the position would seemingly help the Nats, as it would mean fewer day-to-day decisions that have to be filtered through the many members of the Lerner family.

As it relates to the ongoing front office search, Cubs GM Carter Hawkins was a candidate but didn’t meet with any of the Lerners in person, which could explain why Hawkins is no longer under consideration for the job.  Svrluga/Golden/Janes report that of the known candidates, former Padres/Diamondbacks GM Josh Byrnes is the only one who is known to have had an in-person meeting with the Lerners.

Whether or not a new chief baseball executive can help smooth this process remains to be seen, as there isn’t any indication that the Nationals will be looking higher up the ladder to install a president atop the organization.  On a more positive note, one source feels the Lerners are cognizant of the leadership vacuum to some extent, as “these last 12 months have really kind of forced them to think more thoroughly about how they want to structure things on a day-to-day basis.  I think there’s some soul-searching going on and they’re trying to figure out what’s the best way to move forward.”