As baseball settles into its second season in the nation’s capital, you can see how the Nationals are starting to fit right in. Perhaps controversy is endemic to Washington, regardless of whether you’re talking about politics, Dan Snyder’s Redskins, or baseball. Some level of dysfunction seems to go with the territory.

Superficially, everything seems to be going well. After coming into town with a 67-95 ballclub, the new Nationals gave the locals a competitive brand of baseball last season, making an early run at unseating the Atlanta Braves in the NL East before fading to a respectable 81-81.That run was due in no small part to some extraordinary good luck in the early going – the Nationals posted an unsustainable 24-10 record in one-run games in the first half – and made for an entertaining reintroduction of baseball to Washington.

Despite expectations (voiced by Cubs president Andy MacPhail, among others) that the new home for the Major League Baseball-owned former Expos wouldn’t be an improvement on Montreal’s extended deathwatch, the Nationals drew 2.7 million fans to a stadium bare of many amenities, inside or out. Whatever its former charms, RFK is barely supported by local public transportation and is marooned in an area of the city remote to both local residents and suburban season ticket holders. Despite those challenges, and despite sketchy television and radio coverage, Washingtonians supported the team in droves.

Unfortunately, MLB doesn’t quite see it that way. While advancing baseball’s insistence on a site south of the Capitol Building for the future home of the Nats, White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf publicly complained about attendance in Washington. He did so without noting any possible effect generated by baseball’s shutdown of the Nationals’ business operations and ticket sales in December of 2004, just a month after setting up shop in the first place. That spitefully petty action was made in response to the Washington D.C. City Council’s attempt to secure a stadium deal shorn of its more punitive aspects should the city fail to have a stadium ready for Opening Day 2008. Once the details were superficially ironed out, MLB stopped holding the franchise hostage and allowed it to resume ticket sales.

Reviewing the Nationals’ attendance in light of other introductions of baseball to new markets (see accompanying chart), however, shows that Washington liked its baseball just fine.

A direct comparison to the experiences of recent expansion teams doesn’t really work in every way, of course. The absence of a stable ownership group with local ties handicapped the Nationals’ ability to set down roots in the surrounding business community. Similarly, fans in Washington didn’t have the advantage of the long lead-up to the team’s arrival the way that the last two generations of expansion cities did. And then there’s the damage done and the message sent by baseball’s decision to shorten the ticket sales window with its stadium-related tantrum.

The Nationals franchise is different from the recent expansion teams in other ways. Instead of being built from the ground up and having the benefit of an expansion draft, the Nationals organization has been built despite a certain neglect and careerist manipulation. The team hasn’t started off with the best possible base from which to build a consistent contender. When handled by gener al manager Omar Minaya in Montreal, the team was subject to his ambition to pad his resume with short-term success. Big-name deals were made and top prospects were traded away all so the team could briefly bob up around .500 while earning Minaya the wheel ‘n deal reputation that made him an attractive choice for the Mets.

If Minaya was an opportunist, original Nationals GM Jim Bowden was a man begging for a last chance. A front office free agent after he helped run the Cincinnati Reds into the ground, Bowden was a man who needed his next job more than it needed him. Where Minaya wanted to demonstrate that he could be a good GM, Bowden simply needed to get back into circulation, and took the temp job that being GM of the Nationals represents.

Anticipating that a new owner would want to hire his own GM, Bowden spent much of this winter trying to get a job someplace else. Long-term planning is difficult when you’re running an organization with a slender scouting budget and relying on an odd collection of thrill-seekers, leftovers, and even some genuine front office talent. After the self-seeking rapacity of the Minaya era – and the similarly short-term focus of Bowden’s management – what faith Nationals fans do have must come from Dana Brown’s respectable player development program.

The state of the team’s television deal is another symptom of the Nationals’ status as wards of Major League Baseball. The Nationals are broadcast through a regional network owned by Peter Angelos, owner of the nearby Baltimore Orioles – far from a friend to his new neighbor. Angelos has long been an advocate for regionally marketing his team. The current state of affairs, where Washington’s major cable providers conveniently refuse to offer the Nationals’ “network” to their subscribers because of the sticker price, suits Angelos just fine. Every year that the new franchise fails to grow its brand is another leg up in pitching the virtues of his own team to area fans.

The only solution to this particular pickle will be the arrival of a new owner, because only an owner has something to directly gain or lose if this situation persists. Baseball on Bud Selig’s watch has been given to hand picking new owners for teams, with the main criterion being whether they’ll fit in with their partners, and not merely the largest financial bid.

Selig apparently promised his fellow owners a sale price of at least $300 million when baseball took over the Montreal franchise in 2002,but with the bidding at $450 million, expectations were prematurely modest.

But with the expectation that a new ownership group will be selected from among eight bidders in the weeks to come, caretaker management should become a thing of the past, and actual business development might finally become part of the Nationals’ program.

Ms. Kahrl is a writer for Baseball Prospectus. For more state-of-the-art information, visit www.baseballprospectus.com.