We know the Nationals are off the market, with the Junkies thinking the Lerners just couldn’t get their price and BMitch & Finlay knowing thy may not be ‘actively’ for sale, but can be bought.
Here’s what Grant & Danny wonder, though: now that the Lerners are staying (for now), can they re-engage the fan base as this rebuild continues?
“We don’t know how the last couple of years have been governed. Did they not spend because they're never spending again, or because there was a potential for a sale, where you don’t want to add too many albatross contracts and have the next group inherit them?” Danny asked about the team not spending money the last few years to sign players. “Cost cutting before a sale is a normal thing, you don't want long term overlays – or is it because they're just looking at their watch waiting for the Strasburg situation to somehow magically resolve itself, and it’s the last year of Corbin's deal, so that might kick start some things? There's this feeling of bare bones minimalism that fans don't deserve in the wake of a World Series, that's really happened in earnest.”
“It is complicated, but I think that them keeping the team is better than the team being for sale and being unable to be sold; when you're in flux for sale, that's the worst possible outcome,” Grant replied. “Now, I also think it's worse than them selling to someone that was going to be aggressive and spend money. Steve Cohen, who bought the Mets, was not walking through that door to spend a lot wherever the organization seemingly asks him to. It’s no different than if you're in the process of selling your house and things are kind of falling apart around the home – how much do you really want to dump into the house that you're not going to be living in?”
Maybe it’s as simple as the Orioles are being sold so maybe that favors them with television deals or other intra-market opportunities, but it seems like beefing up the team is the best way to put butts in seats – and given where we are in the rebuild, is this year and next offseason the time to do it?
“In 2019, they were certainly a Top 10 payroll when they won the World Series, and there was a several-year window where they were spending,” Grant said. “They stopped spending post-pandemic as the team sold off its pieces and rebuilt, and so it is my belief that when it's time to hit the switch, they will start doing that again – but make no mistake about it: if their plan is to pretend to be small market or to spend in the bottom 10 in baseball like they're the Rays or some organization that doesn't really spend money, that won't work, because you're not analytically advanced, and don’t spend in the areas you need to cut the corners to not have the personnel like the Astros and other teams did for so long.”
Grant prefers Ted Leonsis just buy the team and move to Monumental Sports Network and call it a day, but he thinks this can work with the Lerners, as he ‘knows they have the club in the bag.’ But, this season and coming off-season will tell him all he needs to know.
“Is it still sort of the same old thing as before, where when they go back to spending, is it still half of the money is deferred for the next 15-20 years?” Danny asked. “We saw what Anthony Rendon did and said, for example. Is it going to be a real thing? I’m hopeful, but I’m not optimistic, because when you do it one way for long enough...”
Maybe, but tanking is cool with GP because that’s how good teams have been built, but he’s also not spending money to support the team, but he needs to see better.
“Even when the payroll was good, even when they spent on the stuff that we see, like the outside of the house, I don't get the sense that this ownership group has ever been great about spending on the stuff we don’t see,” GP said. “Payroll was elite at one point, but remember, they low-balled Bud Black and didn’t want to pay Dusty Baker. That worked out, they won with Davey, but it's not like they have been big spenders other than on players ever. If you look at their biomechanics labs and analytics and R&D, they have some really smart people, but I've never gotten the sense that they're on the forefront of what they're dumping into those departments. That’s where I was hopeful that whether it was Ted or somebody else, someone would come in here and go, ‘oh, this is what we spent, let's add to that budget,’ and either they're going to, or it's not going to work.”
“The unsexy stuff you can’t look up – minor-league facilities, measuring spin rates, all that – what’s the rep been over the last handful of years while they've been winning a bunch of games?” Danny said. “Averaging around 90 wins a year for that better part of 10 years, among the best teams in the sport, they're still not developing a lot of major league talent. The guys that were developed were shipped off for the Sean Doolittles and the Ryan Madsons of the world that helped them win a World Series, I'm not complaining about that, but they had very few reinforcements, guys came that came up and were consistently helpful. Like, the best of the bunch was Erick Fedde, a No, 5 starter eating innings here and there for a team that is gonna win 70 games. None of those things have worked out real well.”