The Washington Nationals could have used Stan Kasten on Thursday.
A management battle between Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo and manager Jim Riggleman needed an experienced hand to come down from above and get a grip on the dispute before it became a debacle.
And make no mistake about it, your manager quitting in midseason at the highest point this beleaguered franchise has experienced since Nationals Park opened in 2008 is a debacle.
Riggleman stunned the sports world when he announced he was quitting moments after the Nationals’ 1-0 win over the Mariners put the team above .500 for the first time this deep in the season since 2005.
The manager, reportedly the lowest paid skipper in baseball at around $600,000, was operating under a one-year contract with a club option for a second year. Riggleman said he had been pressing Rizzo to talk about his contract situation — the option and perhaps an extension — but he wasn’t getting the response he wanted from his boss.
“I thought after 10 years [as a major league manager], I’d earned the right to have a little longer leash,” Riggleman told reporters.
So the manager told Rizzo before the game either the franchise make a longer commitment to him, or he would quit, which he did.
There is no defending Riggleman’s decision. But this was a clash of two cultures — the culture of baseball and the business culture of the Lerner family, the owners of the franchise.
It’s true that within a baseball clubhouse, a manager with no job security beyond the current season loses some of his power and influence. But the Lerner family has their own culture of business and it is considered, to put it kindly, tough.
Rizzo, too, may have been convinced that Riggleman might not have been the manager he wanted in the dugout next season. But you can still pick up Riggleman’s option and fire him if he is not the guy. We are talking about a financial commitment to your manager that is less than what Rizzo has paid Chien Ming Wang, who over two seasons has yet to throw a pitch for this team.
It should have never come to this. Someone needed to step in between Rizzo and Riggleman before this explosion and work this out. It is clear now that when Kasten got out of town at the end of last season, he left a void behind that no one in the Lerner family has been able to fill.
Examiner columnist Thom Loverro is the co-host of “The Sports Fix” from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on ESPN980 and espn980.com. Contact him at [email protected].
