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Mark Lerner’s Nationals have been the worst team in baseball this decade, with four last-place finishes and last year’s distant fourth. Legitimately hampered by a pandemic season that left them unable to capitalize on 2019’s surprise title, the Nationals embarked on a rebuild in 2021 that has produced a strong core. The last few offseasons, though, they have refused to spend money around that core, leaving them once again on the outside looking in at the NL’s contenders. Even this winter, with James Wood, Dylan Crews, Mackenzie Gore, and CJ Abrams comprising a strong collection of inexpensive building blocks, Lerner made it sound like the team is years away: “There’s no point in getting a superstar and paying him hundreds of millions of dollars to win two or three more games.”
