The Washington Nationals are no longer for sal by the Lerner family, with Mark Lerner telling the Washington Post on Monday: "No. We have determined, our family has determined, that we are not going to sell the team."
The decision was evidently made "a while ago."
The announcement came as a surprise after Lerner announced that the family was beginning to explore the possibility of selling the franchise in April 2022.
“Nothing has really changed,” Lerner told the Post on Monday. “We’ve just decided that it’s not the time or the place for it. We’re very happy owning the team and bringing us back a ring one day.”
The Post's Chelsea Janes joined Kevin Sheehan to discuss the future of the Nationals following the Lerner family taking the team off the market.
Janes believes that the Nationals were pulled from the market because there never really was a big market for them in the first place.
"The fact of the matter is there really wasn't a market to pull [the franchise] from," Janes told Sheehan. "If there had been a huge amount of interested buyers, you would have had a bidding war, you would have had a price that they couldn't turn down. This probably ends very differently. I think they are obviously intending to run it indefinitely now and are willing to say so, but I think that's more a product of, frankly, just sort of the market not being there then it this massive change of heart."
Janes' understnading is the Lerner family was hoping to get around $2.4 billion for the Nationals, which is around the number Steve Cohen paid for the New York Mets in late 2020.
"Now, that sounds insane and it is, but the Mets' TV station was not included, so it's not totally crazy, but it's still pretty crazy," she said. "And from what we've heard Ted Leonsis offered 2.2 [billion dollars]-ish. And that was not enough.
"[The family] wanted that number and we've seen recently with the cable deals kind of falling apart around baseball, the general fact of the matter is.. [franchises] are not that desirable right now at this moment. And they weren't gonna probably get that number, so it's not that surprising to me that they said, 'You know what? We'll wait it out."
During that time, the Baltimore Orioles went for just $1.75 billion, which likely didn't help the Lerner family in hoping for a bid in excess of Leonsis' offer. But the prospect of working with new owner David Rubenstein in Baltimore could be easier in getting the MASN TV money sorted than it had been with the Angelos family.
The conversation then shifts to what happens next and what the franchise might do differently with the Lerner family now seemingly planning to continue owning the franchise.
Sheehan and Janes also discuss the comments recently made by ex-Nationals third baseman Anthony Rendon about baseball never really being a top priority for him.
Listen to the full conversation on the audio player above!