Nationals president Stan Kasten was a guest on Versus new, very entertaining sports business program The $ports Take with Sports Professor Rick Horrow. The prgram will air Tuesday October 6th at 6:30pm. This is a “must see” show for Nationals fans and here are a few of Kasten’s quotes from his interview with Horrow.
On the Washington Nationals:
“We know that the record on the field is deplorable and every night that you lose, no matter how many years I’ve been doing this, I still can’t sleep after a loss. So that’s hard, but it’s easier for me in some respect because I don’t just have to focus on the standings or just on the score like fans do. That’s all we need to ask them to do. They don’t have to pay attention to the other things. It’s not their job. It’s our job to focus on the big picture. And that’s made it easier for me because our big picture is so good and we are moving in the right track according to the plan we put in place and annunciated very clearly on our first day on the job. It’s similar, not just to what happened in Atlanta, but what has happened in city after city after city that has had success, but not just success, but sustained success, which is what we’re after.”
On whether Steven Strasburg is transformative to the franchise?
“No, you don’t have those kind of players in baseball. I tell people all the time it could happen in the NBA. In the NBA, you draft Shaquille O’Neill you go to the finals. It can be done that quickly. That’s not how baseball works. Baseball has always been about 25 players and to get the 25 players, I need 250 players in the minor leagues both domestically and internationally. So one player, no matter how good he is, has ever transformed a franchise. A possible exception is Babe Ruth, but certainly no one since then.”
On whether the MLB draft should be adjusted:
“The draft is about, and it’s always been about the teams with the worst records should have access to the best players, the players that they choose. And until we have a firm slotting system the way the NBA has it you can’t assure that and that hurts competitive balance, that hurts our product so we need to get that. The good news about that is that we restrict whatever changes we make just to the draft, as you know, no draft picks are members of the union. So everyone with a vote has nothing to lose. I like that dynamic in helping to get a change made.”
On Ted Turner vs. Ted Lerner:
“[They] couldn’t be more different except in the core business sense of understanding long term visions. I think they’re both great at that and that’s a critical element in building a franchise….Ted Turner, is the epitome of publicity. He is a human publicity machine. It’s what he lives, breathes and creates on his own. Ted Lerner couldn’t be more different – a family-run business, used to doing business, privately, confidentially staying out of the public eye.”
