Nationals Baseball: Monday Not-Quickie : Firing on all cylinders

Monday, July 07, 2025

Monday Not-Quickie : Firing on all cylinders

What's next? 

1) New guys take over... for now. 

Mike DeBartolo is the new GM.  He's young, with a business bent. He's been with the Nats a long time with a role in a lot of different aspects and he's familiar with analytics. Still I imagine with no baseball leadership experience and his history being the second guy on a team who just fired it's GM I assume he's a placeholder. 

Miguel Cairo, bench coach, is the likely choice for interim manager. 

What is on DeBartolo's plate is the draft. He's likely to have been involved and with the first pick the Nats have a pretty decent sense of the 1-3 guys they are looking at. The later rounds have never been good to Rizzo so DeBartolo can't do worse. 

Miguel's got to rally the team but after Davey's "don't blame the coaches" rant that may be easier done. Also compared to the effort they've put out so far even winning 3 out of every 7 would be an improvement. 

Don't expect a new coach in before the end of the year. There isn't really a point. But I'd like to see a new GM in as soon as possible. The draft might be a pass for them. The big focus is on early rounds and your position in the draft and your minor league system means a lot when you make those picks. Any other guy is looking at a different set of players than Rizzo would have been. But I do want the next GM to be here for the trade deadline to begin making the team his.  

Who would I like to take over? Assuming this team is going to be run cheap - you want someone from an org that understands how to win with limitations, Tampa, Cleveland, Milwaukee...

For manager?  If we're going with my heart, let Matty LeCroy take it.  I love that guy.   Also a heart choice but with more thought into it, Rick Sweet is a LONG time minor league manager with seemingly decent skills at mentoring young players.  Let him have his one shot at the majors with a bunch of kids that can make some noise. 

Hey if my "get Rick Short" out of the minors push worked 20 years ago, maybe it can work for all "Rick" five-letter last names that start with S and end with t? 

2)  Fallout.  

Rizzo hinted at some bad blood, probably wants one more shot, and we all think the ownership isn't... at it's best. What sort of hit jobs do we see on the Lerners, or on Rizzo the untouchable king, or on Davey no longer in a position of power? 

Also why now? Why both? What was the process? That usually does come out one way or another.  If you like drama we might see some

3) Does anything else change? 

Ownership could also be ready for a change. With Rizzo and Davey out that's a clean slate for a buyer and we know the Lerners broached selling the team earlier. Could they be up for doing it again? We generally think Mark wants to stay, the siblings and their hubbies want to sell, and no strong decisions can be made unless everyone agrees. If this is all true that's no way to run a franchise, one hamstrung sibling trying to hobble along. You can feel sorry for Mark in this situation a little bit, but by holding on to the team he's making things worse for it.  If you can't put money into it NOW you got to sell 

3 comments:

SMS said...

Compared to the counterfactual of letting DM and Rizzo run out their contracts and letting them go in the offseason, I have to think this path leans in the direction of the Lerners being more likely to commit money than the reverse. That said, I'm not sure there's much use in looking through the tea leaves. We'll have dispositive evidence one way or another on that by next spring. And that's by far the most important condition of any future contention.

Other than that, I expect finding a better manager, or at least a better fit, won't be difficult, but it may be hard to find a better GM than Rizzo.

That said, I'm not worried about the pre-draft timing. Outside of some last minute quibbles over bonus numbers, that work is already done. Maybe some kids get spooked that the org is in turmoil and that ticks up their demands slightly, but I'm not sure how likely that is and the scouting and selecting part should be pretty much unaffected.

Anonymous said...

Will there ever be a better time to BUY than right now? New owner gets much less liability on existing/deferred contracts, full TV rights, get to hire a GM, get to hire a Manager, and some exciting young players to build around. Team just needs to truly be for sale.

Anonymous said...

Be nice if there was a wealthy group of people in the DMV area that are not affiliated Ted Leonsis that are:
- wealthy enough to run a large market teams without cutting corners
- competitive enough to seek to win even if the costs cuts from the bottom line
- competent and patient enough to defer to smart people to run the team
- a resident of the area that wants to keep the team in DC

I am not confident that such a group exists. I fear change.