{"id":11827,"date":"2019-12-05T19:31:38","date_gmt":"2019-12-06T00:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/?p=11827"},"modified":"2019-12-05T19:31:38","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T00:31:38","slug":"nationals-owner-says-team-cannot-afford-rendon-and-strasburg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/2019\/12\/05\/nationals-owner-says-team-cannot-afford-rendon-and-strasburg\/","title":{"rendered":"Nationals owner says team cannot afford Rendon and Strasburg"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Nationals principal owner Mark Lerner told NBC Sports Washington on Thursday that the team could not afford to bring back Anthony Rendon and Stephen Strasburg.<\/p>\n

The Nationals captured the 2019 World Series largely in part because of their star third baseman and pitcher but both players are hitting the free agent market at the same time and the Nationals are already dealing with a bit of a payroll issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really can only afford to have one of those two guys,\u201d Lerner told Donald Dell in an interview<\/a>. \u201cThey\u2019re huge numbers. We already have a really large payroll to begin with.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Nationals moved on from outfielder Bryce Harper after last season so it would hardly be a surprise to see Rendon and\/or Strasburg in a different uniform next season.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re pursuing them, we\u2019re pursuing other free agents in case they decided to go elsewhere,\u201d Lerner said in the interview with Dell. \u201cAgain, it\u2019s not up to us. We can give them a great offer — which we\u2019ve done to both of those players. They\u2019re great people. We\u2019d be delighted if they stay. But it\u2019s not up to us, it\u2019s up to them. That\u2019s why they call it free agency.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nationals principal owner Mark Lerner told NBC Sports Washington on Thursday that the team could not afford to bring back Anthony Rendon and Stephen Strasburg. The Nationals captured the 2019 World Series largely in part because of their star third baseman and pitcher but both players are hitting the free agent market at the same […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[499],"tags":[1145,605,503,501,212,20],"coauthors":[6],"class_list":{"0":"post-11827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-anthony-rendon","9":"tag-fron","10":"tag-front","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-stephen-strasburg","13":"tag-washington-nationals"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11830,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11827\/revisions\/11830"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11827"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}