In spring training, before the season began, maybe there really was no reason for the ownership of the local baseball team to look at its general manager, consider his body of work and decide whether to pick up the two-year option on his contract. "It's early," Mark Lerner, one of the Washington Nationals' owners, said at the time. The deadline for such an action, written into the contract of General Manager Mike Rizzo, is June 15. Early, in March? Maybe.
But at some point, early becomes late, and late becomes unnecessary, and before you know it you have yet another instance in which you’re left to wonder: Why do the Lerners make easy things so difficult so often?
The decision, by now, must have been made, or close to it, and if the owners were evaluating Rizzo on the composition and performance of this 2016 team — and not on the entirety of his tenure, which includes the acquisition of everyone in the organization not named Ryan Zimmerman — then what are they waiting for, after a 14-5 start following Tuesday night’s 4-3 series-opening loss against Philadelphia at Nationals Park?
So they must have at least broached the subject about it with Rizzo, particularly after the story generated the industry-wide reaction of, "Huh?" when it first appeared in The Post on March 13. Right, Mike?
“No,” Rizzo said Tuesday at Nationals Park.
Really?
“No one has mentioned my contract to me,” said Rizzo, who signed his current deal in August 2013. “But look: I’ve been a proud National since Day One. I have a great relationship with the Lerner family. I can’t allow that to distract my focus. I have a ballclub to run and that’s what I plan to do. I’m confident something will get worked out.”
And that’s about as much as he wanted to say.
Emails to three Lerner family members who serve as principal owners — Mark Lerner, the son of managing principal owner Ted Lerner, and Ted’s two son-in-laws Ed Cohen and Robert Tanenbaum — went unanswered Tuesday. A Nationals spokesperson said, “We don’t comment on personnel matters.”
“The thing about Rizz is: He’s always going to have your back,” reigning National League MVP Bryce Harper said Tuesday, “and he’s always going to strive to make things better for you.”
Nationals 2016 home opener
+31
After a long rain delay, Washington falls to Miami, 6-4, to kick off the season at home.
Would Rizzo say the same of his bosses?
Now, to be clear: There is a sense this will get done. Rizzo’s option, which covers 2017 and ’18 and is worth $2.5 million per season, will almost certainly get picked up. Indeed, a person familiar with ownership’s thinking said “no drama” is expected.
Except the weird thing is: Since we're here, in late April, there already is drama.
By the letter of the law, are the Lerners doing anything wrong? Nope. Rizzo signed the contract. So, the Lerners’ thinking is, of course: Why? Why now? Or a month ago? Or a month from now? Why not, say, June 14?
But the flip side is what makes sense to everyone else in baseball: Why not now? Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Plus, there's a fundamental difference in whether you pick up the contract option on a construction foreman from doing the same with the general manager of a baseball team. The former is discussed around job sites. The latter is discussed publicly, in bars and in the stands.
That difference, one of public perception and intensity of interest, may not matter to the Lerners. This July, they will mark 10 years of Nationals ownership, and there is much to celebrate. Baseball is now part of the fabric of the District’s sports landscape. There are kids growing up who don’t know there was a 33-year period in which the nation’s capital was a baseball wasteland. And however you view the disappointments of 2013 and ’15, and the gut-punches in the playoffs of 2012 and ’14, the reality is that since Opening Day of 2012, only one team (St. Louis) has won more games than the Nationals.
“He probably sees talent as well as any GM,” said Zimmerman, who wasn’t drafted by Rizzo (Jim Bowden did that), but did sign an extension with him. “But at the same time he does a good job of making sure that he’s getting good teammates, too.”
This isn’t necessarily a time to go over Rizzo’s draft achievements (obvious consensus No. 1s Stephen Strasburg and Harper, sure, but Jordan Zimmermann and Anthony Rendon and the supposed risk of Lucas Giolito, now the top right-handed pitching prospect in the game) or to point out, again, his record in trades (Denard Span for Alex Meyer, Matt Capps for Wilson Ramos, Jonathan Papelbon for . . . okay, we’ll wait on that). Nor is it a time to focus on the Lerners’ other missteps (low-balling Bud Black in a messy manager search last fall, declining to pay for multiple stopwatches for minor-league coaching staffs, tone-deaf moves large and small).
But it is a time to point out that these decisions — or non-decisions — don't go unnoticed, and Rizzo isn't the only one affected. Baseball is, in a word, catty. It is an industry in which front-office members know and interact with their counterparts from other clubs. They know what industry standards and norms are. And they know when a club's employees work under unusual circumstances.
Rizzo's future, too, affects all the members of his front office, because if there's uncertainty for him, there's uncertainty for them, and their checks don't include all the zeroes at the end of them. So we are here, again, with a technicality distracting us from what should matter. These Nationals have matched the 2012 team for the best start in team history. They head off on what could be a thrilling 10-game trip through St. Louis, Kansas City and Chicago later this week. The focus should be squarely on the field. And yet, for no good reason, the Nationals allow the eye to wander to issues that shouldn't be issues, chipping away at whatever good vibes the team on the field — the team assembled by Mike Rizzo — is providing.
