I just happened to have the MLB network on yesterday when shocking news broke: the Nats have fired both Manager Davey Martinez and long-time General Manager Mike Rizzo by way of a typical say-nothing milquetoast “ownership announcement” from the Lerner family citing the “need for a fresh approach.”
This is the same non-speak you hear when someone who’s been fired from their job says they “need to spend more time with their family.”
The main reason the timing was their contract options; both had 2026 options due this month. If the team wanted to go in a different direction, they had to be picked up by month’s end. Perhaps the simplest answer is this: Lerner’s already knew they wanted to go in a different direction this coming off-season and decided to cut bait now instead of on July 31st and have themselves two lame duck executives for the rest of the season. However, there’s a lot more to it, at least for Rizzo’s firing.
The timing of canning Rizzo is somewhat ridiculous. The team is in the middle of draft prep, a draft where they hold the #1 overall pick and have $16.5M to dole out. Not only that, but right after the draft, its trade season, where the GM has to wheel and deal to find the best moves for a failing team. Firing Rizzo this week is a complete indictment of the ownership group’s decision making, who, if they really truly believe Mike Rizzo is the reason this team is in last place and not themselves for holding back payroll, then they’re even more delusional than we thought. I can only think there’s more to this story w/r/t canning Rizzo today. GMs generally have a massive say in the top 2-3 picks of each draft, since they’re the most money and the highest-leverage negotiations, but then the Scouting Director mostly dictates the rest of the picks. So, whacking the GM now is still “bad,” but not quite as bad for the rest of the draft.
The larger issue considering Rizzo’s tenure here is a lot more understandable. We’ve discussed the relative failure of the Rizzo regime w/r/t both player development and drafting more and more lately. Rizzo has pretty much failed at picking an impact player in the 1st or 2nd round for a decade straight at this point, and the system’s overall failure to develop impact players has extended that entire time. The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal crushed Rizzo and the team in late May for this same point: quoting that article, “… since 2013, the Nationals have drafted and developed only three players with career bWARs above 5.0. Those three — Nick Pivetta, Erick Fedde, Jesús Luzardo — made their marks with other teams.” That’s so bad as to be laughable. We’ve lived through years of failed 1st rounders and an even worse track record on 2nd rounders. Seth Romero may have been the nadir of Rizzo’s draft strategy, picking a known headcase AND paying him an above slot bonus was a move that the entire baseball industry predicted ahead of time how it would work out, correctly.
It’s fair to criticize Rizzo and his staff for this. But that’s not the entire reason the team is in last place, again. They’re spending a fraction of what it takes to compete in the NL east in 2025. If the Lerner’s actually, truly believe a $113M payroll should be in playoff contention this year, then they’re even more delusional than we thought.
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For Martinez, the writing may have been on the wall for a few weeks now after his ill-thought press conference throwing his players under the bus for performance. MLB Managers don’t have long careers anymore primarily for one reason: MLB players who earn multiple times the salary of the manager can only take so much “leadership” before they tune him out. Martinez is known as a “player’s manager,” meaning he takes a softer approach, an approach where he relies on his prior on-field experiences to say to players, “dude I used to play too, listen to my advice.” Player managers are the best … until they’re not. Then suddenly a losing team takes advantage, doesn’t heed advice, and suddenly you need to swing the pendulum far to the other side of Manager types and get yourself a “Task master.” If you look back at the recent history of our managers you can kind of see this swinging back and forth:
- Martinez: Player manager
- preceded by Dusty Baker, also a player manager but an old school cross over one
- preceded by Matt Williams, a task master
- preceded by Davey Johnson, definitely a player’s manager
- preceded by Jim Riggleman, a task master
- preceded by Manny Acta, a player’s manager
- preceded by Frank Robinson, absolutely an old school task master
- preceded by Felipe Alou, absolutely a player’s manager.
Anyway, you get the point. Prepare for this team to install some old-school A-hole who whips the team into shape.
Unfortunately, the Nats made the wrong kind of news over the weekend, looking again like the inept, bumbling organization they have been long-considered in baseball circles. Let’s hope it doesn’t result in some ridiculous decision making at the 2025 draft.
Danny Haas, the new-this-year director of scouting, will still be running the draft. He could actually, potentially, benefit in two ways: 1) if he’s run into any we’ve-always-done-it-this-way turbulence, and 2) Boras’s buddy is no longer president of baseball operations. If there was any push/lean toward Holliday because of the Boras/Rizzo relationship, it’s no longer there. (Jackson Holliday is a Boras client, so there’s a strong assumption that Ethan is as well.)
KW
7 Jul 25 at 11:59 am
There will be (and already has been) a lot of debate about how much blame Rizzo and Martinez do or don’t deserve for getting the franchise into the rather deep ditch in which it finds itself. Nearly everyone would, however, assign a larger portion of the blame to Mark Lerner. It’s really hard to see how the team will get out of the depths unless/until he sells.
KW
7 Jul 25 at 12:06 pm
I had always heard that the Nats’ relationship was Boras was primarily with Ted Lerner, not Rizzo. The big contracts between the Nats and Boras clients typically came down to meetings between Ted Lerner and Boras.
Can’t imagine that if there is any “tie-breaking” between potential overall #1 picks, it is going to a player because he is represented by Boras.
Also, LSU LHP and other potential overall #1 pick Kade Anderson is also represented by Boras.
Pilchard
7 Jul 25 at 12:34 pm
@Will — Rosenthal thinks the Nats should “listen on Gore”:
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6477294/2025/07/06/washington-nationals-lerner-rizzo-martinez-firings/
KW
7 Jul 25 at 12:35 pm
My sense is that 1-1 is down to either Holliday or Anderson, both Boras clients. You have to commit dollars to compete in the modern league, else you’re Pittsburgh or Colorado. And that’s what this team has become.
Todd Boss
7 Jul 25 at 12:48 pm
I agree with Todd that the timing here is very strange. It would be extremely odd to fire Rizzo and then trade Gore–Mike Rizzo is exactly the guy you’d want to maximize the return on a Gore trade! On the other hand, Mike Rizzo is definitely not the guy you’d want to navigate the 1-1 pick given his draft record over the past decade.
For me, the number one outcome here is: interim GM, interim manager, followed by a sale of the franchise in the offseason. I have no idea how plausible that scenario is.
I’m just extremely skeptical that *this* ownership group is capable of improving upon Mike Rizzo (warts and all) as the GM. What I’d like most is for the Nats to hire an up-and-coming wunderkind as GM, but Mark Lerner strikes me as constitutionally incapable of identifying such a person. Instead, the two most likely outcomes are a promotion from within, which is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, or some older GM retread, who has all of Rizzo’s bad qualities but none of his good ones.
Derek
7 Jul 25 at 1:02 pm
Also, big news day: Fangraphs releases its Nats prospect list–https://blogs.fangraphs.com/washington-nationals-top-39-prospects/
Derek
7 Jul 25 at 1:03 pm
Fangraphs release: talk about a congestion of things to write about: all star game, home run derby, more 1-1 draft content, now rizzo/davey firing, plus I’ve got July 1st prospect review still in draft mode and now a top prospect list in July. Sheesh.
Todd Boss
7 Jul 25 at 1:15 pm
FWIW, heard an interview with Ben McDonald on Kade Anderson. McDonald knows his game well as Ben is an LSU legend, and he covered the CWS. McDonald likes Anderson and has him ranked well-ahead of Liam Doyle (McDonald projected Doyle as a closer) and Jamie Arnold (limited upside).
All of that said, McDonald acknowledged that Anderson’s ceiling is likely a #3 starter on the MLB level. While the Nats could use a legit #3 starter, you would want more projectability out of the overall #1 pick. Put another way, even by a baseball guy with a LSU-slant, Anderson is not projected to be a franchise-changing type of talent.
Anonymous
7 Jul 25 at 3:25 pm
Rizzo was also very close with Boras. He was the one who greased the skids for Boras to develop a relationship with Ted Lerner.
I’ll mention that I’m not a Boras hater, and that the Nats benefited overall from those relationships. But Rizzo also signed a few questionable Boras clients over the years as well, and certainly made a few questionable Boras draft picks.
KW
7 Jul 25 at 5:30 pm
@Anon — It’s ceiling vs. risk. Anderson is much more likely to make it to a #3 starter ceiling than Doyle is to a #2 (where Law slots him), or Hernandez to a #1, or Holliday to being an above-average regular. And beyond those guys, there’s really not that much projection, at least at the top of the draft.
KW
7 Jul 25 at 5:34 pm
I don’t hate the idea of a change, particularly of the manager (I would have fired Davey three years ago), but I share the near-universal sentiment that I don’t really trust the current ownership group to make the right choice. I also wonder whether the ownership situation will scare off some of the best candidates. If Rizzo couldn’t get the Lerners to spend, I’m really not sure that anyone else can.
I noted on Nats Prospects that Stan Kasten gave Rizzo great credit for getting Ted Lerner to spend. Said he (Kasten) had tried and tried and really didn’t think anyone would be able to convince the old man. But Rizzo did, and a decade of prosperity followed, both on the field and financially for the franchise. Fundamentally, that was Rizzo’s greatest accomplishment.
Anyway, I’d feel a lot better about this new era if it was like the Commanders after their sale, where the old problems with the franchise were gone and good people were actually eager to work for them.
KW
7 Jul 25 at 6:08 pm
First glance on FG prospects list: very pleased to see that they still have Crews with a 60 FV. I’m not sure whether I believe it, but it’s comforting to know that they still believe in him so highly.
The top 12 is a pretty solid list, but then they go silly with a catcher who is hitting .212 in the DSL. C’mon, folks, wait until someone actually does something to rank them. Same with Hurtado, who is repeating the DSL, which is basically like a college frosh having to repeat high school baseball. Hurtado currently has one extra-base hit after 19 games. Yeah, sure, rank him ahead of Hassell and Lara.
KW
7 Jul 25 at 6:18 pm
I posted more detailed thoughts over at NatsProspects, but to summarize: I’m grateful for both Martinez and Rizzo’s contributions, but the game has passed them by and they showed an inability to adapt, particularly to a rebuild scenario, when neither guy was particularly well suited to this (they were much better suited to managing a winning team). The time came to move on. Though I do share Derek’s concern about whether Mark Lerner will be able to appoint someone better than Rizzo. I have complete faith they’ll get someone better than Martinez and his buddies.
The timing, however, is curious. Why now? The logical time to fire Davey was after his absurd comments. But that was 4 weeks ago. The only logic now is that since then, we’ve continued to be bad, and there are no signs of a 2019-esque turnaround. But why yesterday? Well, those options need to be declined, of course! And this is what gives me the biggest worry. Mark Lerner’s motivation in all of this was to save a couple million dollars on Davey and Rizzo’s contracts vesting, rather than the need for change, which suggests more years of austerity.
Another theory could be Rizzo and Lerner disagreed on the future of the team at both the Draft and the trade deadline, perhaps about the closeness of this team to competitiveness. Maybe they too were disagreeing on the need to retain/trade someone like Gore? Rizzo’s passive aggressive comments surely suggest an acrimonious relationship, but that doesn’t have to mean this was why he was fired.
As KW pointed out already, the draft is in good hands. I’d sincerely hope Rizzo wasn’t intimately involved in the minutiae of the draft, but perhaps gets the final say if guys like Ciolek and Haas disagree on whether they like Holliday or Anderson.
It’s the trade deadline that I’m most worried about. Rizzo’s strength has been trades, and we still have some tradeable assets. Putting Gore aside, Soroka, Finnegan, Lowe and Rosario all have SOME trade value and (with the exception of possibly Lowe) must be traded for whatever we can get. Rizzo has worked wonders in the past (while making a fair share of mistakes), and I’m not sure DiBartolo can fill in as effectively.
Will
8 Jul 25 at 6:03 am
On the FG prospects list, Todd, will you make a separate post about it?
My initial thoughts are surprise by how much Longenhagen placed on untested DSL products. He’s usually been a lot higher on the low-ceiling types than the complete lottery tickets in the past. He was one of a very few prospect watchers who rated Millas last year. McDaniel and BA have tended to dream on future potential.
Last year, 2 guys below A ball were ranked on his list: Hurtado and Feliz. This year, there’s 8! And these aren’t mega-bonus IFAs. German and Tejeda, for example, are relatively small bonus babies.
That’s… weird, and suggests a rather fundamental shift in valuation.
Will
8 Jul 25 at 7:38 am
@Will; absolutely will do a post on the Fangraphs list. Just pressed for time this week badly.
Todd Boss
8 Jul 25 at 8:53 am
My thinking with Boras is that he is after the highest number of total dollars for his players, period. And that really means getting as many guys on the payroll of the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, Phillies, and Astros as possible. If you’re not one of those teams, then his MO is to go round and round with you on how much you can afford, then he takes that number to the Big 5 and they beat it. You’re just not going to keep talent unless that player really wants to stay where he came up.
I hated trading Soto, but it was pretty obvious he was never going to stay, and I still think $50M is tough to justify for him.
Also, half of those guys are FLOPS in their new jobs. Turner, Strasburg, Rendon, JZimm, Desmond — all those free agents were bullets dodged. Even Soto is playing a lot more like a $30M hitter than a $50M hitter.
So, what do you do? I mean, you can try to keep these guys, and maybe you’ll keep 1/5 of them. Maybe a good move would be to hire someone whose job it is to convince players not to listen to Boras’s advice. Boras is out to make sure _all_ players make more money, but not each individual one. (Remember the story that Ian Desmond told about not accepting the Nats’ offer because he didn’t want to mess up the comps for other shortstops?)
Anyway, the Lerners need to pick a number that they’ll spend, including MLB payroll, minors payroll, and a coaching/infrastructure budget. Apparently a big part of the problem is that there are multiple decision-makers in the ownership group, and they are squirrely.
Whatever – all we can do is sit around and complain. And either watch them lose or don’t watch.
Kevin R
8 Jul 25 at 9:34 am
Rizzo definitely did a solid job with the contracts he handed out (save for Strasburg, which wasn’t on him; Lerner made that with Boras and cut out Rizzo).
These were his biggest deals:
x Max Scherzer 7yr $210M (cost 1st round draft pick)
x Jayson Werth 7yr 126M
x Ryan Zimmermann 8yrs 100M
x Ryan Zimmerman 5yr $45M
x Gio Gonzalez 5yr deal 42M
x Rafael Soriano 2yr $28M (cost 1st round draft pick)
x Adam LaRoche 2yr $24M
x Daniel Murphy 3yr/$37.5M (cost 1st round draft pick)
But, as you noted, he didn’t sign Harper, Turner, Schwarber, Scherzer again, Rendon, Zimmermann, Desmond. Most of those have not worked out, at all. I mean, I think i’d still take Turner & Harper, but that’s me. Scherzer deal alone should have bought him several more years, as should have the Soto trade return.
Todd Boss
8 Jul 25 at 9:15 pm