the Washington Post\u2019s Barry Svrluga, Andrew Golden, and Chelsea Janes<\/a> sheds some light on the Nats, as the Post trio spoke with \u201cmore than a dozen current or former employees of the Nationals and others around MLB familiar with how the Lerners run their team.\u201d\u00a0 The overall opinion isn\u2019t positive, as the story outlines a too-many-cooks situation that has left the Nationals without a singular leadership voice.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s so inefficient.\u00a0 When there\u2019s that many people in the room, it\u2019s hard to come to decisions in an orderly fashion,\u201d said one source.\u00a0 One former employee is still unclear on the decision-making process, wondering \u201cHow does [anything] get decided?\u00a0 Who has input into it?\u00a0 Who is influential and who\u2019s not?\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t tell you the first thing because I\u2019m not in those meetings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ted Lerner (who passed away in 2023) initially bought the Nationals in 2006, and his son Mark became the team\u2019s official control person in 2018.\u00a0 Mark Lerner is the name most fans associate with being the Nationals\u2019 \u201cowner\u201d in a broad sense, but Mark has been open about the fact that he is far from the only member of the family with a say in the team\u2019s operations.<\/p>\n
This seemingly means that up to 10 different people share input into the Nationals\u2019 decisions, according to Svrluga\/Golden\/Janes.\u00a0 The list includes Mark Lerner, his sister Marla Lerner Tanenbaum, his brothers-in-law Bob Tanenbaum and Ed Cohen, four of Ted Lerner\u2019s grandchildren (Jonathan and Jacob Lerner, Michael and Jaclyn Cohen), and \u201cto a lesser extent\u201d Mark\u2019s wife Judy and Mark\u2019s sister Debra Lerner Cohen.<\/p>\n
The sheer number of people involved in the leadership structure is an obvious immediate issue.\u00a0 A former Nationals executive described this organizational structure as \u201cchaotic,\u201d and two different Post sources referred to the team as \u201cdirectionless.\u201d\u00a0 Another former employee said that \u201cmore than once, I had an owner tell me to do something and then had another say not to spend time on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
For some insight into the various personalities involved within the family, Mark is known to have the most overt interest in baseball operations, while the Post story notes that Ed Cohen \u201cis more heavily involved in major business negotiations.\u201d\u00a0 Marla Lerner Tanenbaum \u201coversees the Nationals\u2019 philanthropic arm\u201d and her husband Bob \u201cis the least involved in day-to-day operations.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lack of a team president was noted as a flaw by several sources, as the Nationals haven\u2019t had anyone in the position since Stan Kasten left the organization following the 2010 season.\u00a0 The specific responsibilities of a team president vary from club to club depending on who is in the role, but having someone from either a baseball or business background in the position would seemingly help the Nats, as it would mean fewer day-to-day decisions that have to be filtered through the many members of the Lerner family.<\/p>\n
As it relates to the ongoing front office search, Cubs GM Carter Hawkins was a candidate but didn\u2019t meet with any of the Lerners in person, which could explain why Hawkins is no longer under consideration<\/a> for the job.\u00a0 Svrluga\/Golden\/Janes report that of the known candidates, former Padres\/Diamondbacks GM Josh Byrnes is the only one who is known to have had an in-person meeting with the Lerners.<\/p>\nWhether or not a new chief baseball executive can help smooth this process remains to be seen, as there isn\u2019t any indication that the Nationals will be looking higher up the ladder to install a president atop the organization.\u00a0 On a more positive note, one source feels the Lerners are cognizant of the leadership vacuum to some extent, as \u201cthese last 12 months have really kind of forced them to think more thoroughly about how they want to structure things on a day-to-day basis.\u00a0 I think there\u2019s some soul-searching going on and they\u2019re trying to figure out what\u2019s the best way to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Nationals are embarking on a transformational offseason, as the interview process is underway to find the team\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,104739,591,85],"class_list":["post-157336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mark-lerner","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}