http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/6762940 The horror stories circulated among baseball people all spring. The Nationals, they said, were months behind in reimbursing their scouts for travel expenses. One scout told a friend that the team owed him approximately $8,000. "If I don't get my money," said another Nationals scout who spoke on condition of anonymity. "I'll just stay home." Nationals general manager Jim Bowden says that will not be necessary. "We're going to fix it. We're going to be efficient. And they're going to get paid," Bowden says. "Yes, there have been problems. There's enough blame to go around. But the most important thing is, we're solving them internally. The last sets of expenses were turned around within eight days. It won't be an issue going forward." There are other business-related issues, however — issues that have arisen since Ted Lerner and his ownership group officially took control from Major League Baseball last July 21. The Lerner group, current and former employees say, require a multi-layered approval process for most expenditures and detailed explanations for outlays as minor as a Class A affiliate's $8 purchase of sunflower seeds. Nationals officials say that the Lerner group, seeking to make the organization more efficient, is entitled to answers after spending $450 million to purchase the club. But in their quest for efficiency, former employees say, ownership occasionally produces inefficient results. In December, for example, Nationals minor-league officials requested approval to purchase 600 of the team's 2005 caps from New Era for $4 each, former employees say. The caps were to be used for minor-league players in spring training as well as players in the Gulf Coast League, Dominican Summer League and extended spring training. It took six weeks for the purchase to be approved, according to the former employees. At that point the caps no longer were available, leaving the Nationals to purchase 2007 caps for $11 each — a net loss of $4,200. The lengthy approval process also led to the cutting off of DirecTV for a time at RFK Stadium last season and created difficulties with the reimbursement of expenses to the team's Triple-A affiliate, which then was located in New Orleans The new ownership is discovering that a major-league club operates much differently than Ted Lerner's principal holding, Lerner Enterprises, the largest private real-estate developer in the Washington, D.C. area. "As I remind people all the time, every owner of a last-place team in every sport is someone who was rich and fabulously successful somewhere at some point," says Nationals president Stan Kasten, who spoke on behalf of the Lerner group for this story. "It takes learning. It takes studying. My owners are 100 percent dedicated to studying and learning everything they can." In the meantime, friction is inevitable. Employees, unaccustomed to new practices, sometimes are resentful of the additional work. Bills get paid, but not always promptly. "Some of those things are incorporating the accounting system of a large, established company (Lerner Enterprises) into this company's accounting system," Kasten says. "And remember, this company's accounting system as it existed until this past July was in Montreal, New York, Washington and Florida." Montreal was the Nationals' old home, Washington the new home, Melbourne, Fla., the spring-training home. New York was the location of the team's owner, Major League Baseball. The implication is that under MLB, the franchise was disjointed, if not an outright mess. "I have to defend the Lerners," assistant GM Bob Boone says. "It was so inefficient. It was like, 'Stop this! This is madness! Now let's walk through it to get efficient, find the snags.' "If I were the owner, I'd be saying, 'Come explain it to me. Come explain why I need this many baseballs.' If you owned this thing and just whipped out the kind of money they whipped out and came into the inefficiency that was here, I've got to tell you, I would have said, 'Stop! I'm not paying another stinking bill until I figure this sucker out. My people are going to get in there. My people, who aren't baseball people. We're going to learn about baseball as fast as we can.' " The process takes time. The Lerner group requires three bids for every significant purchase and reproductions of MLB's exclusive contracts with bat and ball companies before ordering such items. Nationals officials, however, say that ownership is responsive when given its requested information. Second baseman Ron Belliard, for example, wanted to order a dozen new bats even though he already had received a shipment of 36. Ownership representatives asked why the additional purchase was necessary. Nationals officials explained that Belliard wanted a different bat after trying the lighter model used by Marlins second baseman Dan Uggla. The explanation was accepted. The bats were ordered. Another lesson learned. --

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