The Washington Post’s Tom Boswell offered what has to be considered the most sweeping indictment of the Nats ownership in the short history of the Washington franchise. In a column that appeared in The Washington Post on Friday morning, Boswell wrote that the problems with the Nats start with the ownership: with those responsible for putting the product on the field. Sooner or later, he implies, you have to conclude that the team stinks because the owners stink: “When problems go this deep, the causes should be sought at the top, not the bottom,” Boswell notes. “Accountability doesn’t lie with a pitching rotation full of rookies or a bullpen built on tissue-thin résumés and prayer. In the past, the Nats have had injury excuses and cheerful long-term timetables to shield them. But now the blame — and the solutions, if any — surely must lie at the top with the billionaire Lerner family and team president Stan Kasten.”

We’ve heard some of this before: but never quite so brazenly, or from a baseball insider who almost always knows more than he writes. Which can only mean that the situation is worse than Boswell is letting on — hard as that is to believe. Boswell’s message is transparent: the penny-pinching Lerners are more worried about turning a profit than fielding a winning team. Which means they will end up with neither. Kasten (brought on to help the new owners learn a little about baseball), has either been unwilling or unable to stand up to them. The result — catalogued with painful accuracy by the Post’s top baseball writer (and one of the best baseball journalists in the country) — has been a series of mistakes that have made the Nats the worst team in baseball and emptied Nationals Park of patient fans.

Nats Fans Are Voting With Their Feet: They're Staying Away

Boswell provides a sobering antidote to those of us who have been arguing for patience: Kasten has shown that he knows how to build teams, but hasn’t been given the chance. Still (Boswell notes), the fault is as much his as the Lerners: he shielded and enabled them. Finally Kasten took a stand — he forced the signing of Adam Dunn, added payroll in a trade with Florida, and signed the face of the franchise, Ryan Zimmerman, to a long-term deal. But Kasten’s courage came too late. The team had shunned possible no-brainer signings (of Jon Garland and Orlando Hudson), were living through the collapse of Lastings Milledge and had decided to live with a pitching staff of kids and castoffs. Thusly, Boswell’s indictments.

The impact of this goes well beyond either the team on the field or the plunge in attendance. The Lerners must now scramble to retrieve their credibility. Which means that Stephen Strasburg’s agent — Scott Boras — will ask top dollar for his star pitcher, knowing the Lerners will have to meet his demands or face public humiliation. Some sweet justice: the Lerners’ penchant for counting paperclips will either end up costing them millions more than they otherwise might have paid or it will make them the laughstock of the league. Or both. Nor are other franchises likely to show sympathy for the Nats’ plight: Nick Johnson, Adam Dunn, Josh Willingham and Austin Kearns are all tradeable commodities, but their value is dependent on the needs of other teams — and not their inherent value. They won’t bring much in return and their departure will rob the team of the only thing it has: hitters. Finally, the Lerners reputation as tightwads has now been transmitted to a fan base that has lost faith in their ability to get it right. That’s going to be hard to retrieve. 

Boswell ends his column with a series of questions: “Did the Nats actually bottom out last winter? Are we seeing the delayed comeuppance now for the previous 2 1/2 years? Or are the Nats, with the oddly fitted Lerner-Kasten combination at the top, a franchise that is systemically dysfunctional?” And he answers: “Stay tuned.” Boswell is right to point to “the top” in laying blame. My only argument with him is that he doesn’t go far enough. The Lerners aren’t at the top – that position is held by Commissioner Bud Selig, who was responsible for deciding which of the eight ownership groups would get to buy the team. He picked the Lerners. Maybe he got it wrong.