Come late February, when hope springs eternal for every team in Major League Baseball, the Washington Nationals will head to their preseason home in Viera, Florida trying once again to win a World Series – or at the very least – hoping to finally win a playoff series.
However, for the seventh time in what will be their 11th season in D.C., the Nationals will be led by a new manager after firing Dusty Baker last week. After two consecutive National League eastern division titles Washington’s immediate gratification front office laid the blame of the most recent organization failure at the hands of the latest manager who was released in embarrassing fashion.
The Washington Nationals announced Manager Dusty Baker won’t be back next season despite leading the Nationals to the NL East title in each of his two years with the club. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
As the Nationals head into another disappointing offseason they might want to think of replacing the door with hinges on the manager’s office to a revolving model – the kind normally reserved for department stores, banks or Trump administration employees. Their penchant for blaming what happens in the dugout solely for their failures in October speaks not only to their futility on the field in crunch time as it does to the inability to put the right parts together that ultimately makes for a championship team. That falls on the shoulders of the front office.
Jerry Krause, the architect of the Chicago Bulls dynasty in the NBA of the 1990’s once said, “Teams don’t win championships, organization’s do.” Granted, that organization had the greatest player in the history of the sport fall to them when the Portland Trail Blazers passed on drafting Michael Jordan to take injury prone Sam Bowie in 1984. That organization also had the hubris to break up Michael and the Bulls after six championships in eight years and they haven’t been to the NBA Finals since 1997.
The Nationals aren’t cheap and have spent big money on their pitching staff and in free agency. They started with Jayson Werth – their first major free agent signing in 2011 – spending $127 million over seven years which yielded nothing but “changed the culture around here” according to local experts. He never won a playoff series either and hit only .213 over four playoff tries.
Max Scherzer is the latest impact free agent year deal worth $210 million and he delivers in the regular season. Scherzer has won a Cy Young Award, anchored their starting rotation and pitched two no hitters. But he hasn’t been able to win a playoff series either.
Bryce Harper is one of the marketing faces of MLB, but his face appears mostly on milk cartons during the playoffs. Harper hits only .211 over 19 postseason games yet there remains the thought he will finish his career with the Yankees after signing a $500 million deal. For the record: he hasn’t won a playoff series either.
Guaranteed contracts make it difficult to move big deals and the Nationals have done a nice job blending their talent into a great regular season roster. However, the parts haven’t delivered in crunch time for whoever is managing in October.
The Nationals offense hibernated again this October and Vice President Mike Rizzo had enough. Rizzo believes they should be better than one and done in the playoffs and they should be. However, the one constant during these classic fall disappointments has been Rizzo, who buys nice groceries, but they haven’t been cooked with a championship recipe.
With 192 regular season victories and the respect of the clubhouse Baker deserved at least two more shots at leading the Nationals back to the playoffs. He would seem to have been more solution than problem. But when do the sands in the hourglass shift to counting down on Rizzo?