A response letter to the Washington Nationals front office

We agree with you, this season has been rough. We too had hopes that this season would be the start of something special. The start of a rise of a young cast of characters’ who would inevitably compete somewhere down the road. We too have seen how the Marlins, the Rays, and the Diamondbacks have turned a new franchise into a competitor within a decade. We shared this dream together.

However while we were hopeful for this season we were realistic.

We knew going into this offseason that the club needed to focus on improving the teams Major League level pitching. You can imagine our surprise when instead of addressing this issue, you reinforced over and over two positions in which we had a surplus of players; outfield and first base.

However while one poor offseason is understandable, the inexcusable missteps date back into the past, year after year.

We all knew that when Alfonso Soriano was the best hitter in baseball, when John Patterson was out performing his talent, when Cristian Guzman was hitting well over .300 in his contract year and when Dmitri Young had emerged from the dead that the economics of baseball demanded that we sell high and buy low. Yet year after year, the trade deadline came and went, and we were left with no investment in our future; only a burnt out hope of excitement given to us by having these players on our team for three more months.

The stance taken on these moves were irresponsible. They were political. They were made not in the best interest of the teams’ future, but rather in the best interest of business and the immediate security of your jobs for at least another season.

 Would the team have struggled for the remainder of the year had we traded those players? Yes. Did they anyways? Yes.

 The only result for keeping those players in Nationals uniforms was to create cheap thrill for fans, but more importantly to you all, more money in your pockets and one more year in office.

The truth is while we have made the sacrifice to shell out ridiculous amounts of money for a last place team, the front office has not made the sacrifice to take a short term hit in revenue for the long-term reward in a successful team and a successful franchise.

Would fewer fans have come to the games? Yes. Do fewer fans come out to the games now anyways? Yes.

Im sorry Mr. Kasten, the Learners, or whoever wrote this letter but we find it hard to stomach the idea that you open this pseudo-apology with the statement that no one is more disappointed in the Nationals success than you are.

While you surely have put in many hours and long days into building this team, the thought that the outcome of this team’s success means more to you than it does to us is ridiculous. We are the ones who have waited, some of us our whole lives, to have a team in Washington. We are the one who spend our last dime supporting a team that doesn’t support us. We are the ones who get heckled for your missteps, and we are the ones invest our hearts into an entity that you have continually ran into the ground.

We too are hopeful for the future, but we are getting impatient, and we are getting weary.

Let us both hope this turns around in the near future.

Sincerely,

William R. Yoder
Editor of The Nats Blog

P.S And yes, I have the respect to sign my own letter.

This letter was a response to the letter that the Washington Nationals sent to fans yesterday following Manny Acta’s release.