Only three years removed from winning the World Series, the Washington Nationals have gone from the top of the baseball world to the bottom looking up. As of today, the only players that remain from the World Series team are Patrick Corbin, Stephen Strasburg, Victor Robles, Aníbal Sánchez, Sean Doolittle, Joe Ross, and Tanner Rainey.
If you look, only three players on that list aren’t on the IL. In a short three years, the team that won the World Series is a complete shell of itself, and the Nationals’ front office has only themselves to blame.
The new owners need to have the mindset for the Washington Nationals never to be in a situation to trade top-level talent. The Nationals should never be in this situation again. That should be a guiding principle statement for any owner who takes over the team to the rest of their front office.
The Nationals now have an opportunity not only to start the process to get back to the postseason sooner, but they also need to embrace the moment. Now that they have some payroll, they have about 80 million when you add in the mandatory stuff, and the Nationals need to spend and spend smartly. The team needs to realize that you must sign the talent you develop. Big bloated contracts can’t be given out to pitchers; there needs to be a distribution of money around the baseball diamond that reflects the current game, not the game of old.
The new owners of the Washington Nationals need to prioritize developing and maintaining the farm system for long-term success for this franchise (which improved from 24th to 8th with the trade today). The Nationals must improve how they develop players and continue to draft top talent no matter what position that talent plays on the field. No more focus on one particular area; the team needs a “best player” available approach to the draft. It is time to stop acting like a mid-level baseball franchise and start acting like a powerhouse that we all know the Nationals can be and should be.
The new owners need to have the mindset for the Washington Nationals never to be in a situation to trade top-level talent. The Nationals should never be in this situation again. That should be a guiding principle statement for any owner who takes over the team to the rest of their front office.
Not only should the new owners be focused on developing the farm system, but they must also deal with the MASN issue immediately. That deal is hurting the team and needs to be resolved. If I owned the team, I would march up to New York City and MLB HQ and demand that the MASN issue be resolved and that the Nationals get all the money owed for this mess. The time to address the MASN deal is now.
The new owners need to have the mindset for the Washington Nationals never to be in a situation to trade top-level talent. The Nationals should never be in this situation again.
Things will be hard for the Nationals but what happens next is extremely important for baseball here in Washington D.C. the moment is now; it’s time to turn the page on the past; no more talk about 2019; with Juan Soto gone, its time for the team, the city to focus on the future, so this sell-off never happens again.
