Stan Kasten

Stan Kasten, the only President that the Washington Nationals have ever had, announced this afternoon that he was stepping down at the end of the season. Kasten will still hang on to his minority ownership stake in the team. (Kudos to Thomas Boswell of the Post, who actually opined yesterday that Kasten was leaving the team.) Hey, maybe Kasten got a look at the team’s recent attendance figures and figured he’d be better off getting out now.

But in all seriousness: is this a big deal? Well, that depends on who you ask. Kasten was the public face of the ownership side of the team, so the big media response today isn’t surprising. Among diehard Nats fans (if one can even call Nats fans diehards after only five-plus years of existence), Kasten’s not exactly a well-liked guy. Despite bringing in a half-decent general manager in Mike Rizzo, successfully signing phenoms in Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper and having a long-term plan to transform the Nationals from a laughingstock into a legitimate team, the on-field failures and off-field gaffes — most notably, Kasten’s role in the active recruitment of Phillies fans to buy tickets at Nationals Park on Opening Day this season — bred a reputation of distaste. Add in the fact that Kasten had experienced so much success with the Atlanta Braves raising expectations, and he got buried.

On the other hand, if you’re a regular Joe who goes to Nationals Park three or four times a year and sometimes watches the games on TV, does Kasten’s departure really mean anything? Not really. Mike Rizzo’s the guy who’s responsible for putting the players on the field, and the Lerners are the ones responsible for figuring out how much money they want to give Rizzo to play with. Kasten being in town wasn’t ever going to be the reason big-name free agents start considering Washington as a destination, and the product on the field can certainly continue whatever slow progress it had going for it without him.

What does matter is who the Nationals bring in to replace Kasten — and, more importantly, what is he or she will do to actually make people excited about the team. They desperately could use a shot in the arm — and a fresh voice could be part of the answer.