Mark Lerner

It's not an apples to apples comparison, but I think there's evidence there that when you invest in your team and you show that you are trying to put a winning product on the field, the people will come, and I think that's 100% true in this town.

I would love to see, and I have zero faith that this will happen, but I would love to see Mark Lerner do some sort of interview/conversation/something where he talks about some of this stuff and just is frank about, "Hey, you know, we're here.

We're committed to this team.

We believe in this team." You know, something to give Nats fans encouragement about ownership.

It's been way too long since we've had anything like that from ownership.

Again, I don't think this is gonna happen a- and I've brought this up for years now.

Like, Mark Lerner should do some sort of conversation with someone, whether it's with you, whether it's with a team employee like Dan Kolko or Ryan Zimmerman, like, whatever.

Do it with someone so there can be some sort of assuring of Nats fans of, "Hey, we are the owners of this team.

Yes, a contract extension.

Is Nats ownership, the Lerner Group, back in business, back to spending real money on players? Now, this is not a mega money contract extension, but this is a significant contract extension.

The contract extension reportedly is worth $47 million over the first four years, and the option reportedly is worth $23 million million.

So this is either a four-year $47 million contract extension or a five-year $70 million contract extension.

Or even...

if who Cavalli has been this season is close to who he now is.

But also with this Cade Cavalli contract extension is what it says about how in the Lerner ownership group is.

And while we don't know for sure, we can say a few things.

But that is one of the thoughts that comes to mind when you think about why you do a deal like this now with Cavalli and how being a fairly team-friendly deal that could actually open up even more resources down the road for other guys.

Managing principal owner Mark Lerner, the Nats' six other principal owners, or the Nats' back open for business? We shall see.

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market.

And you can still try to extend someone.

So I think the Nationals in this ownership group and this front office, it was probably pretty easy to bargain with Cavalli, probably pretty easy to bargain with Mark Lerner and the rest of the family to say, hey, We've got around $30 million coming off the books, and we could use that money because next season, according to SpotTrack, as it sits today, the Nationals have the 30th highest payroll in baseball.

Unacceptable.

Now, with the Nats now potentially extending Cade Cavalli, that obviously changes the look of it.