Washington Nationals supervisor Dave Martinez is wanting ahead to Sunday evening’s MLB First-Year Player Draft. His crew may have the second choose within the draft and seem like a lock to get one of many two most highly-rated school prospects — pitcher Paul Skenes or his LSU teammate, outfielder Dylan Crews.
He’s hoping to be round for greater than a handshake and a hiya from the crew’s subsequent potential star. Right now, that’s up within the air.
Martinez’s contract ends on the finish of this season — as does the person who will run the draft Sunday, president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo.
The Lerner household signed each of them to two-year contracts in 2020 after which exercised their membership possibility final July. There aren’t any extra choices — besides to signal both or each of them to a different contract.
That is definitely difficult by the notion that the Lerners are seemingly promoting the franchise. Or not. Nobody appears to be certain, which hangs over everybody within the group, significantly the baseball decision-makers within the entrance workplace, on the sector, and the gamers themselves.
“We don’t really know what’s going on,” one membership official informed me.
In case the message has gotten misplaced among the many house owners, Martinez desires to make it clear — he desires to be right here to assist lead the brand new Nationals’ high choose and the remainder of the promising younger gamers of their system to a different World Series championship.
“I love it here,” he informed me. “I need to see this via. I need to win one other championship right here. I hope they view me because the man who can cause them to one other championship. I positively need to be right here.
Typically, a lame-duck supervisor has a troublesome time doing his job in a clubhouse the place veteran gamers determine they are going to be right here when their skipper is gone and tune out his messages.
The Nationals are usually not that sort of clubhouse. It’s a mix of younger gamers within the early days of their careers and spare elements from different groups combating to hold on to their main league careers. They’ve proven no indicators of dismissing what their supervisor is preaching. On the opposite, this crew has performed onerous.
I do know this drives the keyboard managers loopy as a result of there isn’t any metric for this, however 80% of the managing job in as we speak’s sport are private relationships — managing the personalities in your crew. Martinez has confirmed to be wonderful at this, whether or not it’s been the veterans on the 2019 World Series championship squad or the children he manages as we speak. The principal cause they’re 34-53 is solely that they don’t seem to be excellent — an absence of expertise.
They have been swept in 4 video games by the Cincinnati Reds this week primarily as a result of the hole in expertise is that nice.
Even among the many younger gamers, Martinez’s future is a supply of dialogue. They have sufficient to take care of studying easy methods to be main league gamers. They don’t want the distractions.
The assumption is that with the most recent settlement between MASN and the Nationals, a big roadblock has been eliminated to cease the Lerners, who introduced final 12 months they have been exploring promoting the franchise, from getting nearer to creating that deal — if that continues to be the plan.
However, there stays one other five-year income share to barter between the 2, and there may be little cause to consider that can go easily — or, as soon as that’s achieved, the precise negotiations to purchase the crew from the Lerners, who’ve a well-earned popularity for being troublesome in enterprise dealings.
With all this uncertainty, the household faces this vital choice about extending the contract of Martinez and Rizzo. It’s troublesome to consider that the sale wouldn’t be extra difficult if the Lerners determined to make management modifications in the course of all this.
Sunday evening can be an enormous step in that rebuild — not simply with the quantity two choose within the draft. The Nationals have the primary choice within the second spherical — the fortieth choose due to the aggressive steadiness spherical from 30 to 39 — and that one is seen as essential. “We’ve got to get that 40th pick right,” a membership official stated.
If there are new house owners, do they need an instantaneous change on this course of, with new decision-makers in cost? No, this crew — Rizzo and Martinez — are those you need to see it via.
⦁ You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.
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