The Nationals have been on the market for a good portion of the past year. The Lerner family first announced in April they were looking into sale possibilities for the franchise. Subsequent reports suggested the family was hopeful of completing the process by the early-December Winter Meetings.
That obviously did not happen, and it doesn’t seem a resolution is imminent. The Talk Nats blog reported Tuesday afternoon that negotiations were not close to the finish line. That aligns with their reporting from late November, when Talk Nats wrote the franchise’s uncertain local broadcasting situation related to the ongoing MASN dispute was keeping the Lerners from settling on an agreeable price point with the Ted Leonsis group that had emerged as the frontrunner in discussions.
TV rights remain the biggest issue in the Washington sale. As part of the relocation efforts to move the franchise from Montreal to Washington nearly two decades ago, MLB (which owned the Expos/Nationals at the time) agreed to tie its local broadcasting rights to the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network. MASN is jointly owned by the Nats and Orioles, but the Orioles’ ownership share is roughly 77% while the Nats own around 23%. That agreement, a condition of the franchise’s relocation into the Orioles’ geographic territorial rights, caps the Nationals’ TV revenue by making it impermissible for them to sell broadcasting rights to a regional sports network.
Leonsis owns NBC Sports Washington and would almost certainly prefer to broadcast Nationals games on that network if he took control of the franchise. Doing so would require negotiating a way out of the MASN contract with the Orioles, though, and it’s not clear whether the Baltimore organization has any interest in doing so. MLB has gotten involved in an attempt to broker a settlement between the franchises, but there’s no indication they’ve made progress to this point.
Uncertainty about future local TV revenues is an obvious concern for a possible buyer. Against that backdrop, it’s now a real question whether the Lerner family will sell a majority stake at all. Talk Nats suggested it’s possible the Lerners pivot to selling a minority share of the franchise. Chelsea Janes and Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post echoed that sentiment this evening, writing that the Lerners now seem likelier to take on a minority partner than sell the franchise entirely. Nothing has been formally decided. Both Talk Nats and the Washington Post suggest possibilities range from no change in the ownership structure at all to a deal of a minority share or a sale of the controlling stake coming together.
Janes and Svrluga suggest a middle ground may be to sell a minority share with a path to that buyer taking over majority ownership down the line. The Dolan family took that tack with the Guardians last summer, immediately selling roughly 25-30% of the franchise to David Blitzer in a deal that reportedly gives Blitzer the option to purchase majority control six years thereafter.
It’s an ongoing saga that obviously hasn’t resolved as the Lerner family had envisioned. There are still myriad possibilities that’ll hang over the franchise for as long as this process remains up in the air. The franchise is amidst a full rebuild and ran out the worst team in the majors last season. They’ve made a few short-term free agent investments this winter, bringing in Dominic Smith, Corey Dickerson, Jeimer Candelario and retaining Erasmo Ramírez on one-year contracts worth a combined $10.25MM. Their biggest investment of the offseason was a two-year, $13MM pact for starter Trevor Williams.
Roster Resource projects the franchise’s player payroll around $104MM. That’s $31MM south of last season’s Opening Day figure. It’d be the franchise’s lowest season-opening payroll since 2012, although it’s possible GM Mike Rizzo and his staff have some more spending room to add another veteran target or two to supplement a young roster.
The dispute between the Nationals and Orioles ownership is still one of the best opportunities for ordinary working stiffs to find out real information as to the accounting books for major league baseball teams.
That and the Braves being owned by a publicly traded company
Liberty Media is also planning to spin-off the Braves (ABH) into its own publicly-traded stock which will make dissecting their balance sheet even easier.
The Orioles MASN deal is reminiscent of the Spirits of St Louis deal with the NBA or an early DQ franchisee agreement. Never make a deal without a defined end date.
Why would MLB ever agree to this deal? It didn’t take a genius to see this playing out this way. Nevada TV market is owned by 6 different teams, what happens when a team moves to Las Vegas.? Nashville is in Braves and Reds territory so will they let a team move into Nashville or will it require a team to join the Braves TV deal.?
If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say that this deal let MLB move the Expos without paying cash to buy out the O’s territorial rights. Of course this was a going to be a problem down the road but it didn’t stop MLB from moving the franchise or selling it to the Lerners..
I think you’re on the right track and the Nats/MLB situation was a weird anomaly.
A new market is likely to mean new territorial rights for that team, with current occupiers getting a fat payday.
The awful TV deal forced on the Lerners is going to remain an albatross on the franchise unless the new buyers relocate the franchise.
Sadly, DC will be left with a billion dollar stadium. Empty and will zero chance of ever landing another MLB tenant. A financial disaster.
MLB wanted the homeless Montreal team to have a home.
MLB wanted it to be DC.
MLB asked Peter Angelos (Orioles owner, Baltimore native, super powerful/rich Lawyer), under what conditions he would allow a team in DC.
Peter Angelos gave MLB an agreement HE wrote.
MLB signed it.
Didn’t negotiate. Didn’t revise it. May not have even read it.
MLB wanted the Wealthiest area of the Orioles territorial rights.
So they paid for it.
I get why they signed a deal but don’t understand why a billion dollar business wouldn’t foresee and prevent a situation like this.
If the Nats had to get Baltimore’s permission to move to DC, do the A’s need LAD, ANA, SD, SF and Arizona’s permission to move to Las Vegas? Or would it be different because that market is owned by multiple teams and DC belonged to BAL exclusively?
Uncle Ben’s TEK — I think the Nats thing never happens again…for multiple reasons, but mainly, MLB was desperate to find a home for a homeless club.
If the Expos were still owened by a Franchisee (as opposed to MLB) a better deal would have come about.
Angelos was under a lot of pressure, from MLB/other owners, for 2 years to allow the franchise into DC. So he gave them his ultimatum.
And they signed it. (Arguable, they should not have).
Other teams looking to relocate have an Ownership structure that’ll make terrific decisions on moving/paying other rights holders.
The people that signed the MASN deal were not Owners.
MLB is the party most responsible for the Nationals problems. Bad stuardship.
The archaic local TV market structure is an albatross for all of MLB. They’ll never attract new generations of fans without widespread access to local streaming.
Would the sale pending status of the Nats or Angels make them more likely to take a flyer on Trevor Bauer.
The new owners could say it wasn’t their fault.
The MASN dispute has been going on for so long now that astronomers report that they can measure it’s red shift.
Obviously, MLB is content to sit and watch the Nationals franchise wither on the vine.
Obviously.
I vote scorched earth. Buy the nationals, and move the team. Orioles MASN revenues go down, WAY down. People of DC aren’t going to Baltimore to watch a game, especially after the bad blood.
From what I recall the nationals agreed to lease the ballpark for 5.5m a year, 30 years. Just keep leasing it, dump a AAA or AA team in there. The lease payments are a pittance.
Then the gauntlet is down. Os can negotiate in good faith and everyone is happy, or, as I said, revenues and value of MASN tank and the Os can be co tent with a territory that generate near zero ticket of TV revenue. Nats then go somewhere else.
It makes more sense to move Baltimore to Nashville.
One team is (for now) for sale, and, the other isn’t. The team for sale is easier to relocate via the new buyer saying enough with the BS.
…or, the Nationals can fullfil thier LEGAL OBLIGATION and pay what they said they would pay?!
Typical Nats fan attitude–“We took the most valuable part of the Orioles territory and we shouldn’t have to a dime for it”.
Just more of the entitled DC attitude.
Objectively, it’s angelos/masn that haven’t upheld their end of the bargain, and, repeated verdicts in favor of the Nats have been rendered for several years now.
In reality, it’s the Nationals that haven’t accepted thier legal agreement.
Nationals are trying to get “out” of an agreement they signed.
And no silly, if all the legal decisions have been going Nationals way…it’d be over. Humm…maybe the Orioles and Nationals have both won cases in court.
But the biggest legal victory, was US Appeals court saying the MLB Binding Arbitration agreement was illegal.
You know what the odds of getting out of a Binding Arbitration are??!!!?!
99% of all Binding Arbitration cases don’t get over turned. The MLB/Nationals Binding Arbitration was soooooooo wrong, the Federal Court sided w/ Orioles.
The fact that Orioles got out of Binding Arbitration is a massive indicator as to how magnificenly Wrong the Nationals/MLB position is.
Keep trying to spin the facts.
Except that’s not true at all. The masn/Os are currently appealing the 105m award against them, nothing about that award has been overturned. Currently there’s roughly 25m additional owed in interest, and, the ONLY thing the Os/masn have ‘won’ if you want to call it that is the court handling the appeal declined to require regular interest payment to be paid into the court registry.
The appeal itself still hasn’t been docketed due to courts backlogs.
There has been no ruling that the arbitration was unfair. There had been no ruling that mlb was an improper venue to oversee the arbitration.
All it is at this point is a company seeking to get out of the arbitration agreement because it didn’t like the outcome.
“In 2015, the Orioles won a fleeting court victory when a New York judge ruled MASN did not receive an impartial hearing from an earlier MLB arbitration panel of club owners. The judge cited MASN’s argument that the same outside counsel — New York-based law firm Proskauer Rose — represented the Nationals, Major League Baseball and the three teams whose owners were on the arbitration panel during the years when the case was being considered.”
baltimoresun.com/sports/orioles/bs-sp-orioles-masn…
It’s the Nationals that want out of the MASN deal.
Probably shouldn’t have signed it. But they did.
Not any more complicated than the Nationals not liking the deal that allowed them into DC.
Pay what was agreed…or leave DC.
Everything else is moot.
Again, off-base. The Nats owe nothing, $0, nada to the Os/MASN. There is nothing for the lerners/Nats TO pay the Os/MASN, the agreement NEVER had the Nats paying anything monetarily.
The party that breached the agreement and failed to pay money owed was MASN. They stopped paying anything to the Nats.
Then, what arose after failing to make payments was a 2-pronged internal dispute: 1) missed payments owed, and 2) the Nats arguing that Angelos as control person was a) unfairly manipulating costs and expenses which impacted the ‘net profit’ the teams would split per their ownership shares in the network, and b) that MASN was not applying a market-rate to what the television rights were worth compared to other similarly situated clubs. Sort of as if you and someone else owned a 5000sf house, but, you lived there and decided the rent paid to the joint company for you to live there should only be $500/month including utilities. That’s certainly not a market rate and the other owner would be upset that a market value of the property wasn’t being realized hurting their income stream.
Sure there’s smaller issues, but, that’s the gist of the Nats position. MASN/Os on the other hand are fighting pay as little as possible.
GASoxFan —
Yes, the market rates in the MASN deal are/were outta date shortly after the ink was dry. Yes, the Nationals don’t get market value for their TV.
That. Is. The. Point.
That’s the deal that was signed. A legal agreement.
The Nationals don’t like that (who the would??!).
The Nationals have sued to get a better/out of the MASN deal.
It’s not more complicated than that.
MASN is a bad deal for the Nationals. It’s an okay deal for the Orioles. Both clubs would be better off if the Nationals left DC.
Lol says the Os fan. And yet, it’s the Os that are rumored to be moving, not the Nats. The Nats have been siphoning off fans from the Os since they got to DC. You can thank Angelos and his greed for that.
What can I say, there are people in the DC area that don’t like themselves and act in self destructive ways by rooting for a French Canadian team.
Fighting for your legal rights isn’t greed, that’s heroic. Whinning and crying about a legal document you signed being unfair…AFTER you sign it…that’s childish.
I’ve lived in Northern Virginia for about 40 years. I’ve probably gone to Baltimore 3-4 times (and two of those visits to Camden Yards happened after the Nationals moved to DC).
Your city is a dump, and the team hasn’t been much better.
Oriole Park at Camden Yards is a crown jewel of baseball. The archetype of modern baseball parks. The dawn of the golden era of ball parks.
Nats Park is an outdoor stripmall, in the middle of gang land violance. (They even locked down Nats Park till the shooting stopped outside…in front of the stadium).
If you’ve lived in NoVa for 40 years and think DC is better then Baltimore…try going outside NW for once.
And Nats/Nationalsis the worst/lamest/bland name in all of baseball. Even Guardians had more spunk.
Hey buddy? The Nats had 40% more people come watch them at their park then the Os. The Nats traded away Soto, the Os almost made the playoffs. Os are a poverty franchise at this point. Angelos’ sons are already suing each other on who is going to get all the money when they sell the team. Have fun rooting for them in Salt Lake or wherever they end up.
Papabueno–
Camden Yards is a jewel of baseball stadiums. It is the Dawn of the golden age of baseball parks.
Nats stadium is an outdoor stripmall, with bodies dropping from lead exposure at the front gates. (No joke, I was there when they locked the Stadium down because of the live rounds flying all over, just outside the gates. Previously PNC Park had the honor of shaddiest (was offered ‘rock’ for $5 from the parking attendant!))
Think DC is better then Baltimore…try going outside N.W. sometime! Lmao. Only some one from NoVa would think DC is better than Baltimore.
For the initial term everyone lived under the contract. It demanded in its terms fees be renegotiated in 2012 for a new 5 year term through 2016.
In 2012 the Os wanted to pay WSH 30s m/yr. WSH wanted 110s m/yr. They never agreed and went arbitration, which set a rate of 50s m/yr and Os kicked and screamed and refused to pay.
Lawsuits followed. Nothing vacated, nothing settled other than an initial 100ish million paid into court registry.
No negotiations even started for the second 5yr rate term of 2017-2021, because the Os/Angelos refused to engage or even settle the 2012-2016 period fairly, WSH just reiterated a demand above 100m/yr.
The fact the contract called for renegotiation and increases in fees to the Nats every 5 years means the Os don’t get away with paying the same initial low rate forever, except, they seem to think they can.
Nats Park has 40% more K-Street lobbiests sitting behind the plate for no more than 3 innings…cause they aren’t fans…thier socializing before the strip clubs. Nats Park is a pre-game for the limited social life in the closed after-10:00pm-on-a-Saturday town that DC is.
No poverty DCFTW, Orioles got the Nationals chipping in, lol.
Orioles not being sold, Nationals are. (Or aren’t!!!…cause Lerner signed the most toxic deal ever made. The MASN deal. And now buyers smell that and are walking away. Hehehe)
Don’t worry buddy, the Nats will get sold, they will move (because its worth MILLIONS to leave DC, and owners like thier money!).
Start brushing up on your French!! Montreal broadcasts in par le Vue!
Still very simple.
Nationals want more than the contract stipulated.
The Orioles did not want to give more than the deal allowed.
Nationals sued to get more.
Orioles refused to hand over more than what agreement called for in the deal. And until the FIRST rate can be resolved, will not negotiate any of the other rates…because the Nationals keep whinning about the rates they want vs. agreed to.
Man, think about it. The VERY FIRST TIME the Nationals are supposed to get an increase they go WAY off the deep end and ask for a rate that WAS NOT PART OF THE DEAL.
O’s said 30 Nats said 100+. That’s so far outside the structure of the deal its mindblowing. And then the Nats sued the Orioles for what THEY claimed was owed.
But that’s not what the deal allowed for.
Totally bad faith on the National part. They signed the MASN deal, and ON THE FIRST INCREASE want FAIR MATKET VALUE!!
That’s not what the deal was about, the Nationals IMMEDIATELY went to the mat for market rates.
They hired the greatest group of K-Street lawyers ever assembled to sue the Orioles…but couldn’t break the deal.
Stop being mad at the Orioles…it was the Lerners and MLB that signed the deal.
Not sorry that the Orioles actually expect Nationals to live up to the agreement.
The contract in its terms stipulated a new rate was to be established in 2012. The Os didn’t do that. That’s where the whole dispute started. Neither did they engage to set a second new rate in 2017, and, that having passed I believe we are now in the third new rate period with the Os thinking they get to ignore the contract terms.
What you’re missing is the 30m rate the Os wanted WAS NOT PART OF THE DEAL 2012-ONWARDS ANY MORE THAN THE NATS 110M RATE.
The deal called for escalating persentages, within certain thresholds (10-15%, 15-20% etc) during the predermined time periods, not fixed dollar amounts.
The 30 million was within the ranges.
The Nationals wanted a higher rate than was stipulated in the deal.
Again, National want more than agreed to (which they should want, it’s a bad deal for them) but the Orioles are under no obligation to be fair/change the deal. Why would they?
Lol okay buddy you’re clearly out of touch. Considering there has been absolutely no talk of the Nats moving, they have a modern new park (unlike that dump Camden), they recently won a championship, have a pretty decent track record as far was winning goes over the last decade, and draw decent amount of fans, even an unbiased observer would find it unlikely they’re going anywhere.
Let’s compare that to the Os. The team has been an absolute dumpster fire for 25 years. Your owner is basically a walking skeleton and one of his sons has sued the other for the right to move the team to Nashville. Nashville, by the way, has a very legitimate group of baseball people pushing to bring a team to their city. The Os are leaving, and good riddance. If you can’t accept that then that’s your problem.
dcftw–
You’re adorable! Reading one headline is not knowledge. (You even have the story totally wrong. Lewis published an Op-Ed. Not a lawsuit. And Lewis doesn’t control the Orioles, that’s John.)
Here, lemme help you see the forest.
1. Orioles ownership group are All Marylanders. Intentionally. Peter Angelos is a born and raised Marylander, so he stacked the deck so they don’t move.
2. Maryland general assembly just past a Billion dollar infusion of money for Camden. (over a 5 years period)
3. Leaving Baltimore would mean loosing money by vacating the MASN deal.
4. Orioles are an institution. They are the oldest DMV professional sports team (the Nationals the baby in town).
Money money money. It’s always about money…and the Nationals HAVE a financial motive to leave town. The Orioles have a financial motive to stay.
It’s just business 101.
How’s that DC sale going?? Not finding buyers because of the MASN deal…huh, how odd. Maybe it’s about the money.
Oh, how’s that winning persentage of Nationals vs. Orioles?
How many Hall of Fame players do the Nationals have? How many Championships?
Orioles have more Money, more fans, more championships, more HoF’ers, better winning percentage, and a ballpark that virtually every team in baseball tried to emulate.
Nats have an ugly ball park in a war zone, no fans, no money, and have retained None of thier stars that could have been HoF’ers for the club.
2022 Violent crime rates per capita:
DC = 56.2
Baltimore = 77.8
Just a fact.
Papa —
Good fact.
How many homicides within 2 blocks of Nats Stadium vs. Camden Yards??
I personally attended a Nats game when shots were being fired right outside the Stadium. They locked it down. It happened again when the President went to a game (he had just left when it started, though)
More facts.
You’re a weird dude.
And legal documents are often unfair and get changed.
I’ve been to both many many times. DC is way better. More to do, cleaner, safer and no squeegee people spitting on your windshield.
Dude, everyone knows when you start posting ridiculous things it means you’ve lost the argument. Lost!
Try going outside of North West.
If you’d rather get lead poisoning in DC, rather than squugee’d in Baltimore, that’s your call.
Lol, I guess you ‘won’ that argument. I’ll keep my windshield whipper fluid on hand, you should keep a pint of of blood type handy.
@O’sSay … “Pay what was agreed…or leave DC.”
Like many in Baltimore, you are laboring under an erroneous conception of the MASN dispute. The Nationals owe nothing to MASN or the Orioles or Angelos. As per the terms, the Orioles and Nationals share a sliding ownership scale with the proportions gradually increasing for the Lerners until it reaches 33%.
Since 2012, Angelos has disputed the amount of TV revenue dollars owed to the Lerners, and in the two reset periods (now three), Baltimore has low-balled their share. A series of court cases has gone almost entirely against Angelos but he has managed to extend the dispute to this day. Missteps by MLB have not helped.
It’s a bad deal that should not have been allowed, but MLB was cowed into it. That’s really on the league. Now that it has been nearly 20 years since the Expos came to DC, it’s time to review the contract and find something more equitable. It clearly is not working.
Guys, there’s no point in arguing with this guy. He’s wrong on the contract, he’s wrong on the facts, he’s just wrong. When this is pointed out to him he simply repeats his errors. He’s either deluded, trolling, or both. Save your energy. Let him keep mumbling to himself.
When all else fails: gladiator battle.
These gladiators wear pinstripes, and not the Yankees’ kind.
Okay……give ‘em swords and I’m in!
“Doth ye dare detest an agreement signed?! A dual, sir Lerner!”
I would also assume that any potential buyers would look at the nationals propensity of back loading contracts like a mf’er and say “we are going to need the total of all backloaded future payouts to be converted to 2023 dollars and a significant portion will need to be discounted off the purchase price”.
That coupled with the tv rights probably takes a huge chunk out of the value.
The Strasberg and Corbin contracts will only make a small dent in the billions of dollars the team is worth, the tv contract is the main event.
For sure. But a dent is still a dent.
Scherzer still also owed $45-60m (can’t recall how many more years they’re giving him $15m a year in deferred payments).
Orioles control of TV broadcasts in the DC market is worth $100+ million per year according to the judge in the lawsuit against MASN that is pending in court. That control is basically forever. They are not giving that up without being compensated.
The new owners of the Nationals would either have to deal with them controlling that or buy them out. What would a fair price be to buy them out of the next 20-25 years?
$2 billion? $3 billion?
A solution. One entity/owner buys both teams.
Angelos is 93. One of his sons just sued the other over control of the team and possible relocation. Nats may just need to wait this out and let the Angelos family implode.
I’m waiting for the day when they announce the franchise is going back to Montreal.
Two points about the MASN issue that seem to be consistently overlooked.
First, is that MASN and the Orioles have refused for over 10 years to honor the contract they signed.
Second is that territorial rights are adjusted all the time. And the Orioles being in the AL and the Nationals (then Expos) in the NL, the Orioles had no rights to block the move. Bud Selig was afraid of a lawsuit so he gave away the store to Angelos. So in order to avoid a lawsuit, we have had over 10 years of lawsuits from Angelos – with no end in site on a resolution by the NY courts.
Ha!!
Orioles suing the Nationals??!!
Nah buddy, it’s been the Nats suing the Orioles before the ink was dry on the deal the Nationals signed to be in DC. Nice try though to rewrite history so the Nationals are the poor team being taken advantage of.
ALL of problems are the Nationals trying to get out of a deal THEY SIGNED.
Shouldn’t have signed the deal…but THEY DID.
Deal with it.
Wrong. It is MASN/Orioles who sued because they did not want to abide by the ruling of the contractually mandated arbitrator when the two sides could not agree. Here is a Baltimore paper story the documents that.
baltimoresun.com/sports/orioles/bs-sp-orioles-masn…
Yeah, no.
Appeals are not lawsuits.
And I guess the whole “unfair” practice the Judge sites in overturning Binding Arbitration is of little concern to you.
Yes, the Orioles did not want to settle on an Unfair ruling. What a bunch of jerks, I know.
((Again, it was the Nationals that Started the lawsuit to get what it was not legally entitled))
DJH–
One more thing you seem to be overlooking.
ALL of the money the Nationals claim to be owed is in escrow. Has been since the Nationals filled thier first lawsuit.
They drop the lawsuits, accept they deal THEY SIGNED, then they get their money.
If not, no money, since it’ll be the courts making settlement amount.
If the Nationals want to be in DC, honor the legal agreement. It’s so simple. Nationals want something for nothing. Hahaha…never. Ever.
Wrong. The Nationals accepted what the arbitrator ruled – despite the fact that the arbitrator’s number on the rights fees was closer to what the Orioles wanted than to what the Nationals did.
And the FEDERAL courts vacated the Binding Arbitration!!
You have any idea how rare that is, and the legal hurdles you have to clear to get OUT of Binding Arbitration?
It shows how completely un-moored the Nationals/MLB arbitration are.
Please show the decision ruling the arbitration vacated.
And, due to being in the profession, actually yes, I see arbitration provisions vacated literally every day. It is quite common.
How much in deferrals are owed to players coming up in the mid 2020s and 2030s? I know Scherzer had a lot of deferrals owed, along with Blanton, Soriano, Strasburg, and others. New ownership would be responsible for those payouts each year.
Argh, no. As a Nats fan, I don’t want owners who don’t want to be owners.
Considering that the O’s haven’t even lived up to the rotten MASN deal, MLB should step in an abrogate it. Don’t get me started on what a lousy job the O’s do of operating the network too.
Just in production values alone, MASN is terrible.
The whole point of the MASN deal is the Nationals DON’T get market rates.
And they keep crying for years in court it’s unfair. Of course it is. It was designed and intended to be unfair. But you signed the deal.
Want market rates…find another market.
All of this is started with the Nationals not wanting to live up to terms of the agreement.
(And MLB did try numerous times to step in…but they aren’t impartial…so says the Appeals court that vacated the Binding Arbitration they tried to force on the Orioles.)
Last game I went to was the game after the Soto trade…line-up looked like it was built from a Triple A roster…haven’t been back and haven’t watched any games on MASN since then….probably won’t go back or watch until he team is sold…the rest of the NL East is interesting enough to garner my attention until then…
The MLB created this mess. It’s their job to untangle it. Manfred has a lot of skeletons in his closet and sooner or later the sordid details of his guarded personal life will come out.
MLB should switch the Nats to a non revenue sharing team until the O’s sell and this finally gets resolved. Give us a little more cash and we get the competitive balance picks since the tv deal is just as small as most of those markets. With that being said, can’t wait for that bum Peter Angelos to kick the can.
While DC fans are proposing ridiculous ideas, the Nationals should have Leonsis give the Wizards back to Baltimore, but they can keep that goofy ass name.