You all know how I feel. Davey deserved to get fired as much as any manager who won a WS has, at least on performance. His teams regularly underperformed expectations, including this year, and they regularly failed at the fundamentals, or at least it felt like it. I won't rehash it anymore. You can go back and read what I said a few posts ago. I think it's best for the Nats he's gone.
Rizzo is more complicated. As others have pointed out, Rizzo has a skill set; a steady hand, decent media presence (mainly because it's limited), a good read of other teams young talent, a savvy trader. He also has some flaws; poor draft record, questionable FA eye on the fringes, a bit "my way or the highway" attitude with little sense of taking blame for team failures. It's a mixed bag, but one that lead to a 7-10 season run of relevance and a season in 2025 where three of the hottest young players all reside on his team. You can not like him, you can say his skill set doesn't quite work for the way this team might be run going forward, but you can't say he's bad.
But even his quote suggests - "Hey not my fault" which it certainly partly is. We mentioned the swings and misses in the drafts, allowing Davey and his calvacade of subpar coaches to stay here as long as they did, this year's decision to get a full house of other people's trash and missing on them so very badly that three relievers were gone before Memorial Day. If he really can't see that - he has to go.
Usually ownership groups give GMs the chance to move on from managers before forcing them out. That Rizzo was gone too is interesting. Did Rizzo ride or die with Davey? He seemed to really like him and work well with him.
What happens next will be everything because this is a team with some great young pieces that needs to spend in the off-season. If they do the person making those decisions will be of paramount importance and the person leading the team will matter too.
12 comments:
Longtime reader, first time commenter. (Well north of a decade, so let me finally say thank you for all the great analysis.) My questions: 1) Any thoughts about the interim GM and manager? And 2) I’d welcome your analysis of the candidates you’d like to see get the jobs permanently. Thank you.
With Davey, the firing felt inevitable and has for a while now. Not sure entirely why now was when the move happened, but that’s sometimes how these things are.
The Rizzo move is more surprising, if for no other reason than for timing. Right before a draft where you have the first pick? Before a trade deadline where your team is clearly going to be sellers? Seems ill advised to go into that with an interim GM. Not surprised or particularly sad to see Rizzo go, but the timing seems odd to me.
Firing Rizzo right before the draft shouldn’t matter. He has been incredibly bad at the draft. I never care about who they take in the draft anymore because most of the time they’re duds.
The interim GM seems to be more of a business guy than a baseball guy, based on his resume. That's okay for an interim GM. But maybe that's less okay around the trading deadline. On the third hand, there's no obvious trade bait for value except for Finnegan.
I am of the "keep moving, nothing to see here" view. Davey's poor track record got him fired. My theory: this was not the first time the Lerner's asked Rizzo to fire Davey. This time they insisted, Rizzo resisted again, so they fired him too. He was fired for disloyalty, not based on any evaluation of his strengths and weaknesses as a GM.
I've seen speculation online that Rizzo said "if Davey goes, I go too," and the Lerners said "OK then." Can't assume that's true until someone goes on record, but I wouldn't rule it out at this point.
If there was some sort of discussion between Rizzo and the Lerners about firing Davey a month ago and Rizzo refused, then that would be an admission by Rizzo that he didn't want to be GM anymore. You can certainly go to bat to protect your underling--"you're going to have to fire *me* if you want to fire *him*--but to do that in this context is ridiculous.
The big concern I have about replacing Rizzo is the one Harper identifies: it DEFINITELY can get worse than Rizzo. I have no faith whatsoever that Mark Lerner is capable of identifying a better-than-Rizzo GM and convincing that better-than-Rizzo GM to take the job. I think the best possible outcome here is interim GM through the end of the season, followed by a sale to a new ownership group. I think what we'll end up with is a promoted-from-within GM--probably the same person who gets the interim tag through the end of the season--and business as usual (no significant payroll additions) going forward. I have criticized Harper in the past for seeing DOOM when there is none, but I see a lot of DOOM. I am less confident about the future of the Nats franchise than I was 24 hours ago...
After sleeping on this news, I feel worse about the future of this team. The conversation needs to shift away from Martinez and Rizzo. This entire mess is on Mark Lerner. Martinez manages with the resources he’s given. Rizzo builds a team with a budget he’s given. Lerner doesn’t invest in the team, Rizzo has nothing to spend on FA, resources for scouting and player development, and Martinez is given a dirty diaper of a roster and told “good luck.” It’s ridiculous.
We were all talking about DM’s comments after the Marlins series. With a lack of investment from ownership, it does not matter one iota who manages the clubhouse. Rizzo, while mostly whiffing in the draft, is a shrewd and competent GM overall. It does matter who the GM is, especially if it means making lemonade out of lemons (which is all Mark Lerner is interested in investing right now).
Rizzo’s legacy will be a good one and he should be missed. Martinez… meh. Best of luck. Mark Lerner? What’s his excuse? He doesn’t have a leg to stand on—well, one leg I guess (pun intended, not sorry).
This is DOOM. Nothing will get better until they sell the team. God willing that happens soon. And good riddance when they do.
It's definitely a persistent fan theory that Rizzo was fired b/c he wouldn't fire Martinez. I don't know if that's true, though Rizzo's ongoing support for Martinez well beyond what most GMs would give a guy makes it interesting to think about.
That said, as Harper has illustrated, Davey had to go. The big issue, to me, is the Nationals' near-complete lack of baseball fundamentals. We're lousy defenders across the board. And fast players don't seem to have any idea how to use their speed. (Jacob Young with negative baserunning value is mindblowing.) That's on coaching and managing. The Nats' key players are young, and they're not learning the game of baseball. The only ones who perform are transcendent talents. This seems to be further borne out by the lousy performances of veterans--Nate Lowe, for example, is having by far the worst season of his career despite being nowhere near age-related decline.
And this is an organization-wide problem, because it starts in the minor leagues. It's doubly a failure, because the Nats have been behind the curve on analytics, but an old-school approach should at the least be good at teaching fundamentals. Players should know what base to throw to, how to hit the cut-off man, when to take an extra base, and be aware of game situations. This, more than anything, is why I think Rizzo needed to go. Honestly, I think the narrative "Rizzo is bad at drafting" might actually be more of a "We don't know how Rizzo is at drafting, because he built an organization that's lousy at player development."
The other area where Rizzo stank at was, of course, building a bullpen. Even when the Nats were good, the bullpen rarely was. In the early 10s, Tyler Clippard (and to a lesser extend, Craig Stammen) was the rock holding things together while guys like Storen and Papelbon let their psyches get in the way of their talent. By the back half of the decade, things were desperate. Anybody remember 2017, where the entire Opening Day bullpen utterly stunk and Matt Albers had to come in and hold it together until Rizzo could trade for Doolittle, Madson, and Knitzner? Or 2019, where Doolittle and Hudson were the only relievers that Davey was willing (with good reason!) to trust?
So, the question now becomes, what will ownership do? They can cheap out, put themselves in a holding pattern. Or they can get aggressive, and try to genuinely improve the team and fix the mistakes of the previous decade. (And also to spend in the right places! Tampa may be cheap, but an elite analytics and player development infrastructure is a heck of a lot cheaper than big spending on free agents and is every bit as effective; contrast the Rockies who have been willing to spend over the years but are just clueless.) I think it's going to become pretty obvious pretty fast whether or not there's any point in following the Nats in 2026.
My concern is that the Lerners believe that they can now label the rebuild a failure, blame that totally on Rizzo, and continue to be absolute loser misers for 3-4 years while they give the next guy a chance to engineer another rebuild. I wouldn’t be shocked in Gore is dealt this year or next in furtherance of this plan. The plan being to not spend money while they await the perfect offer to capitalize on (steal?) the value DC taxpayers conferred on the franchise by building it Nats Park.
I'm ecstatic about Davey being gone, but Rizzo being gone right now is terrible. For all his faults you want to argue, there's no denying he's one of the best GMs at making a trade, and the deadline (at which the Nats will be selling) is only a few weeks away. You want him out? Fine, do it after the season or even after the deadline. Or do it a month ago when Davey SHOULD have been fired. But now? Idiocy. It screams impulsiveness and actually makes me believe the internet theory that Rizzo tied himself to Davey and said "if he goes, I go".
Frankly, if I'm Rizzo, I know I'm getting another gig and hopefully with an ownership group that's willing to spend. To him, he's probably breathing a sigh of relief and looking forward to a vacation
He’s in his mid 60s. Might just be time to hang it up.
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