Who will save the Washington Nationals?

As the losing streak reaches double-digits, it is tough to see who will save the Washington Nationals

The Washington Nationals are hitting rock bottom every night. They have no lost 10 straight games, with five of them coming against the Marlins and Rockies. The season is lost and things have spiraled out of control. As Chelsea Janes wrote, the Nationals can no longer pretend everything is okay. We know this year can’t be saved, but how can the Nats save their future.

If the Nationals don’t get their act together, this “rebuild” could turn into a lost decade. We are now 5.5 seasons into the decade and only the Rockies have more losses than the Nats this decade. The Nats rebuild started at the 2021 Trade Deadline, and four years later the team is engulfed in a 10 game losing streak, which is officially the second longest in team history.

So what is next, who can save this team going forward? Well right now we are relying on Mark Lerner, Mike Rizzo and Davey Martinez to save us. While that would be a comforting thought in 2019, the idea of that fills Nats fans with dread these days. Ever since the World Series, all three of these men’s problems have come to the fold.

Let’s start with ownership. At this point, it seems like the only way ownership can save the situation is by selling the team to someone who cares more about the product. In the aforementioned Chelsea Janes article, she hammered home the idea that ownership is checked out and unwilling to put in the necessary effort to run a Major League baseball team. If you don’t care about a product you can sell for well over a billion dollars, why not sell it?

Next on the pyramid is Mike Rizzo. He was among the elite executives in the game in the 2010’s. Rizzo was the architect of some great Nationals teams. However, without ownership spending, some flaws in his approach have been exposed. His drafting and developing woes have come to the forefront.

He can still swing a great trade, as we saw with the Juan Soto deal. However, it is tough to find many good players on the team that didn’t come over from San Diego. That is an indictment on Rizzo for not putting together a good enough developmental pipeline.

Another flaw that is popping up for Rizzo is his stubborn loyalty to Davey Martinez. After Martinez’s explosive press conference the other day, it really felt like the writing was on the wall for Davey. If that wasn’t enough, the team has lost three more games in a row against the Marlins and Rockies. Can it be any more obvious that the team isn’t responding to Martinez anymore? What is Mike Rizzo waiting for?

As for Davey himself, he did great work in 2019. His enthusiasm helped turn a seemingly lost season into a World Series title. He did an amazing job managing his way through that post season as well.

However, times have changed. Martinez’s trade mark enthusiasm is gone. He now has the same emotionless look on his face at all times. Martinez has been passive and detached this season, unwilling to stand up for his players.

However, some of this is on the players. While Martinez saying it is never on coaching is patently absurd, he is right that the players need to step up. Outside of James Wood, CJ Abrams and MacKenzie Gore, most of the team has a lot of soul searching to do.

A lot of guys have underperformed this season and that is why we are in this spot. Luis Garcia Jr’s defensive regression has been unacceptable, as has Nathaniel Lowe’s drop off in production. Those guys are supposed to be pillars of this team.

So who is going to save the Nationals? I really don’t know. The saying goes that the fish rots from the head down. The head of that fish is the Lerner family. They have been unwilling to invest or do anything to save the status quo.

Chelsea Janes said there was a solid chance Rizzo and Martinez get their options picked up for next year. To me that is unacceptable. Both Rizzo and Davey talked about how they wanted this team to compete for the playoffs before the season. They have come up miles short of that goal.

There is a lack of accountability in this organization at the moment and that needs to change. They simply cannot run back the big 3 of Lerner, Rizzo and Davey. I don’t know what will save this team, but I do know that the combination of those three will not. They have proven they cannot do it, and this 10 game losing streak is the cherry on top of half a decade of futility.