The Lerner family is no longer pursuing a sale of the Josh Lowe Jersey Nationals, Mark Lerner tells . We have determined, our family has determined, that we are not going to sell the team, Lerner said, adding that the decision was made a while ago. It was almost two years ago, in April of 2022, that Lerner first that the club would be exploring the po sibility of a sale. Nothing has really changed, Lerner said today. Weve just decided that its not the time or the place for it. Were very happy owning the team and bringing us back a ring one day. In the interim, it seemed like little progre s was made towards the club changing hands. In late 2022, it was that their dispute with the Orioles over the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network was something of an obstacle. When the Montreal Expos were moved to Washington and into the territory of the Os, the former clubs TV rights were given to the latter club. The two clubs jointly own MASN but the Os having a larger share. TV revenue is a significant factor in the finances for a baseball club, as has been quite clear this winter. The ongoing bankruptcy of Diamond Sports Group has put a dent in the spending capacity of various clubs throughout this offseason. The Nats are at a disadvantage in that department as they dont have control over their own rights and have been battling the Os over MASN revenue for years. As of about a year ago, the still indicated that little progre s was being made in terms of selling the Nats. The most likely buyer, Ted Leonsis, owns NBC Sports Washington and likely wanted to put the club on that channel. But the aforementioned complications would make that difficult and seemed to stall the po sibility of anything getting done. It recently seemed po sible there was some light at the end of the tunnel with the developments surrounding the Orioles. The Angelos family, who have owned the Os since 1993, recently agreed to sell the club to a group led by David Rubenstein. That group is going to also acquire the Orioles share of MASN if the deal is ultimately approved by Major League Baseball. Some observers speculated that Rubenstein might sell MASN to Leonsis. It was also that the league could make the Os give up the Nationals TV rights as part of approving the sale, though its unclear if they had any intent to do so. That arguably opened a path for a sale of the Nats to become unclogged but it seems that wont be coming to fruition, with the Lerner family deciding to hold on. Now that the Lerners are sticking around, questions will be raised about the clubs path forward. Despite winning the World Series in 2019, the clubs fortunes turned after that and they have been in a deep rebuild for a while now. They traded and at the 2021 deadline and then one year after that. Thats naturally led to modest activity in recent offseasons but theyve been fairly quiet even by the standards of a rebuilding club. Last year, they mostly gave out one-year pacts to bounceback candidates like and , though they did give a two-year pact to . This winter, the activity has been even more muted, with their $5MM deal for the biggest expenditure of the winter. General manager Mike Rizzo that the club was unlikely to make any more moves of significance. It had been a sumed by some observers that the lack of activity was a reflection of the fact that the club was for sale. The Lerner family could have used the fairly clean payroll outlook as an attractive feature to market to prospective buyers, offering interested parties a chance to put their own stamp on the future of the franchise. Now that the sale is not happening, the spotlight will turn back on the Lerner family and how they plan to get the Nats out of their recent slide. They have finished below .500 in the past four seasons and most projection systems calculate them as likely to be one of the worst clubs in the league in 2024. Jeffrey Springs Jersey