That C.J. Abrams fly ball to end yesterday's Red Sox–Nationals game must have pissed someone off, because the game itself didn't warrant the Nationals firing GM Mike Rizzo and manager Davey Martinez any more than any of the other 52 losses that came before it. It was just another thing that happened to the Nats in their fruitless chase to be either young and spunky or memorably awful when in fact they're just normally awful.
We say this not because Rizzo and Martinez were mighty men done wrong by a scapegoating owner. The five and a half seasons since their World Series championship have been metronomically bad, and this latest stretch in which they have lost 20 of 27 has not been particularly worse in terms of horrifying exhibitions. If there was a completely defensible time to have cleaned out the basement, it would have been three weeks ago, when they needed 11 innings to avoid being swept in a four-game series at home by Colorado. Just on embarrassment alone, someone should have been whacked before the ensuing SoCal road trip.
But no, getting swept by the weirdo Red Sox somehow triggered otherwise narcoleptic owner Mark Lerner to put out the dead trout of a statement thanking Rizzo and Martinez for their many years of faithful service, and noting that these Nats were not reaching expectations even though they have the second-worst record in baseball in this decade. Expectations? What? And more to the point, why?
Lerner's two main contributions to the Nationals have been to announce in each of the last two spring trainings that his family is not selling the team. Other than that and being in the lead car at the championship parade in 2019, he has mostly supervised the halving of the team's payroll from that World Series season, with the commensurate collapse in results. Frankly, the expectations of them being young and bad have been fulfilled.
But this has been a year for firing people in America, and in the top seven pro leagues (MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS, PWHL, and NWSL), 50 coaches out of 172 total teams have been shown the woods since New Year's Day. Nothing satisfies quite like imitation, and Lerner is, in his own languid way, just catching up with his brethren and sistren in the ownership class. Maybe he just now noticed that Baltimore fired Brandon Hyde last month and said, "Hey, I hadn't thought of that."
We should probably just accept the timing for what it is: an accident based on one fellow's whims. The Nats have been as bad as you see them awhile now, and if Lerner is talking about expectations, he’s implying that the tank was supposed to end this year. Sure. Go with that.
Anyway, Lerner sprung into action only about two years after the fan base first started stockpiling its torches and pitchforks, and picked the two easiest targets available. That Rizzo and Martinez got this much time before Lerner noticed that he'd been looking at the standings upside down all these years is noteworthy enough, but their firing was simply another accident for this accident-prone franchise. They had their moments in the 2010s when Lerner's dad was the operator, but 2019 was the upside of their deal with the devil; everything since is the accumulated result of cost-cutting and a slow-motion return for Juan Soto. It's an ongoing insult to the Montreal Expos. And more proof that for an owner, the moment you consider selling your team, you've already abandoned it in your mind.
