Joe Girardi has managed the Yankees for 10 seasons but does not have a contract for next year. (David J. Phillip/AP)

Sports columnist

Barry Svrluga

The last we heard from Joe Girardi was late Saturday night, after his New York Yankees had been shoved aside by the Houston Astros in the seventh game of an enthralling American League Championship Series. The Yankees' loss meant the talk could turn to their manager, who is unsigned for next year.

"We'll see what the future holds," Girardi said.

That uncertainty should be heard, loud and clear, down I-95, straight to the second-floor offices on South Capitol Street. Washington Nationals, you have an opening for a manager. Call Joe Girardi.

If even that suggestion brings snickers from New York (Nationals over Yankees? Thirteen years in the District over 115 years in the Bronx? Zero World Series victories over 27? Ha!) well, then, fine. We get it. Total pipe dream.

But let's put aside how pie-in-the-sky this might seem — okay, what a stretch it actually is — and consider instead why it makes perfect sense.

From the Nationals' side, this needs little discussion. It's obvious. General Manager Mike Rizzo already has laid out the framework for the job: regular season victories by the bushel and division titles followed by division titles aren't enough. The goal here is a World Series.

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Girardi, then, fits a tiny group of potential candidates who can check that box. So do Tony LaRussa and Jim Leyland, but they have both retired from the dugout, and at 53, Girardi's got two decades on the old horses, whose wars are behind them.

Sure, John Farrell has a World Series title, the championship secured by the 2013 Boston Red Sox in Farrell's first season as skipper at Fenway Park. But hiring Farrell would be almost completely about that title. In seven seasons as a manager — two in Toronto, five in Boston — Farrell posted a winning record three times, a losing record three times and one flat-line 81-81 mark. He has three division titles, but four finishes of fourth or worse, including two in dead last, both with the Sox.

Plus, examining Farrell's recent postseason record next to that of the just departed Dusty Baker — who was not invited back by Washington because he couldn't get past the first round — wouldn't be particularly flattering. Dusty's Nats pushed both the Dodgers and the Cubs to a fifth game. Farrell's Red Sox were swept by Cleveland and lost in four games to Houston. Is that an upgrade?

Girardi, we know, would be. He managed the powerhouse Yankees left behind by Hall of Famer Joe Torre (Hmmmmm. Is he worth a call, too? Nah. Stay focused.) and won with them, four straight playoff appearances, including the Yankees' last world championship, back in 2009. He dealt with the Yankees' aging, expensive and inflexible roster, and then managed the transition over the past two summers to this new, athletic, powerful core that looks like it will restore order in the Bronx for years to come.

Therein lies the important question: Why, with Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez and Didi Gregorius and Luis Severino all in pinstripes for the foreseeable future, would Girardi want to move on from the Yankees?

Well, in 2018, the Nationals could counter with Bryce Harper, Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, Daniel Murphy, Anthony Rendon — and more. Plus, Girardi has managed in New York for 10 seasons. That has to be trying and tiring — and not just with the baseball demands, but given the media glare. The D.C. baseball media? It's neither self-deprecating nor flattery to say we're a bit different from the back pages in New York. This could be a nice, safe spot to continue a career with a real chance to win it all — and, in doing so, take a stride toward the Hall of Fame.

So if you're the Lerners, why not just ask? Girardi doesn't sound all-in with the Yankees anyway.

"I love what I do," Girardi told the assembled reporters after that game Saturday night in Houston. ". . . I always talk to my family first. They come first, because I think, when you have a job, your family has to buy in, too."

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Now, this is a familiar refrain for Girardi — one that dates back a decade, and even involves the Nationals.

"I think it's a wonderful job," Girardi told me in a phone conversation 11 years ago this month, speaking of the Nats. "But I think I came to the conclusion at this time that it's not the right move for my family."

Then, the Nationals were looking for a replacement for Frank Robinson, the first manager when baseball returned to the District, the first let go by the Lerner family. Girardi, back then, was coming off a single season managing the then-Florida Marlins, after which he was fired following contentious confrontations with ownership.

Even all those years ago, we learned something about the Lerners and managers. In pursuing their first skipper, the man who would be entrusted with keeping spirits up during a massive rebuilding process, they showed their disregard for the position. Jim Bowden, the general manager at the time, has said since that the Lerners wouldn't pay what it cost to employ Girardi, so the club moved on to Manny Acta. Girardi, too, knew Torre was nearing the end of his time with the Yankees, for whom he served as a World Series-winning catcher in 1996. So spending time with his family lasted only the 2007 season, and then Girardi took Torre's old job.

So what we're asking here is not just for Girardi to leave behind all that history and tradition at Yankee Stadium, and we're not just hoping that, at 53, he continues to ask his family to make the sacrifices necessary to put up with a baseball lifestyle. (To be clear, his family's "sacrifice" recently has been to watch Daddy go away for six months, but to the tune of a four-year, $16-million contract.)

What we're asking for, more directly, is for the Nationals — and not the front office, but ownership — to understand the value of strong, stable leadership, and the cost to bring it here. They had that with Baker, but for whatever reason — Rizzo called it a "pure baseball decision," so in-game strategy had to play a part — they dumped it.

Nothing against Dave Martinez, the bench coach for the Cubs, or Kevin Long, the hitting coach for the Mets. Both seem like qualified candidates, and both are due to interview in Washington.

But a call to Girardi would represent more. It would represent ambition. It would represent transformative thinking on the part of ownership, thinking that would be on par with the rest of the industry. It would require a financial commitment — at least $4 million annually — that would represent an understanding that managers are important, that winning a championship doesn't happen by accident.

"We'll see what the Yankees are thinking," Girardi said Saturday.

The Nats don't need to see what the Yankees are thinking. The Nats can commit to paying an established manager what an established manager is worth. The Nats can pick up the phone. The Nats can call Joe Girardi. And by doing so, the Nats could soften the blow of Baker's departure and have all of baseball wondering about a World Series in Washington a year from now.