The Lerners must make these firings a rethinking, not a reshuffling

Washington Post

07-07-2025

The most shocking part about the Washington Nationals' decision to fire longtime general manager Mike Rizzo and Manager Dave Martinez — stewards of both a World Series winner and a franchise that has spent a half-decade since lagging behind the rest of Major League Baseball — is that it represented active engagement and decision-making by the ownership of the Lerner family. Now, the hard part: Who's next in each of those positions, and what do those choices say about the direction of a tattered franchise going forward?
It's worth parsing the records of Rizzo, a Nationals' employee since 2006 and the head of baseball operations since 2009, and Martinez, the longest-serving manager since baseball returned to the nation's capital two decades ago. Both have strengths and weaknesses, and we'll get to them.
But this crossroads for baseball in Washington is unlike any since the Lerners assumed ownership of what had been a vagabond franchise in 2006. In order, they have provided the infrastructure to build an annual contender that eventually produced a champion, stripped that franchise to the studs, said they were exploring a sale of the team, said they were not exploring a sale, and provided scant funding — not just on payroll for the big-league club, but in resources and personnel up and down the entire organization. Add it all up, and since the World Series championship of 2019, only one team in baseball has lost more games.
That, apparently, is too much to take. Finally.
For this to be a genuine pivot point and not just a shuffling of the deck, it will require a rethinking of how this entire operation runs. The inability to draft and develop homegrown players is on Rizzo and his staff. The lack of improvement by so many of his players — boneheaded baserunning, sloppy fielding, repeated mistakes on the mound — is on Martinez and his staff. The entirety of it all is at the feet of the Lerners, who now must reshape how they have done business for the vast majority of the time they have owned this franchise.
This will be difficult. No significant decision has been made by Nationals' ownership since the death of Ted Lerner, the self-made family patriarch and who was the Lerners' guiding light. Ted Lerner died in February 2023. Even before that, his son Mark had served as the club's point person. But the reality is that decisions were made by a group — Ted Lerner sons-in-law Edward Cohen and Robert Tanenbaum as well as daughters Debra Cohen and Marla Tanenbaum. A third generation — Ted's grandkids — is sometimes involved. There's a herding-cats element to it all, and it can make it hard to find consensus, both with an individual decision as well as an overall direction.
The task right now is to find that consensus, to decide what they want. What's most important: Hiring a new president of baseball operations. The interim is Rizzo's longtime assistant Mike DeBartolo, who began his career with the Nats as an intern in baseball operations in 2012 and quietly worked his way up to a senior vice president role. He is smart and thoughtful, and he cares — as do so many of the people who remain.
Maybe DeBartolo should get the job. But that can't be determined until he makes a presentation that blows the Lerners out of the water with an honest assessment of where things stand now, what he would do differently, and how he would deploy badly needed resources to improve the Nationals' draft-and-development process. That presentation — should DeBartolo get the opportunity to make one — has to be stacked up against similar interviews with the best minds across baseball.
Toss out some names: Thad Levine is an Alexandria, Virginia, native who served high-level front office roles in Texas and Minnesota, though never overseeing the entire operation. Josh Byrnes, who grew up in Washington and served as the general manager in Arizona and San Diego, has been part of the Los Angeles Dodgers' juggernaut since 2014, when he began overseeing a ridiculously good scouting and development process. Erik Neander is the sitting president of baseball operations in Tampa Bay, where the Rays annually do more with less.
How the Lerners handle this process will say so much about their intentions with the club they may or may not want to own. The Nationals have lost an inordinate amount of talent from the business and philanthropic sides of the operation over the past few years. Almost without exception, the replacement for a departing exec has been the next in line. That's not saying any one character wasn't worthy of a promotion. But it's also simply a cheaper way to do things, and shows a lack of curiosity about who might be available and how other teams operate. That can't happen with a new head of baseball operations — who should be the person to choose Martinez's successor in the dugout.
About Rizzo: He deserves a word of appreciation, and years from now, his and Martinez's legacies here should be secure. Rizzo arrived as a scouting director and took over baseball operations a few years later, when the franchise was in crisis. He built a franchise that, from 2012-19, won four National League East titles, made five postseason appearances — capped by that magical run to the crown in 2019 — and won more regular-season games than any team in baseball other than the Dodgers. The Nats were good, and Rizzo's deft trades — for Gio Gonzalez, for Trea Turner, for Sean Doolittle, for so many more — were a big reason.
But while it's true that the Lerners haven't spent money on veterans to fill in around the promising young pieces Rizzo acquired recently — outfielder James Wood, shortstop CJ Abrams and left-hander MacKenzie Gore foremost among them, all in the 2022 swap for superstar Juan Soto — it's also true that Rizzo's draft-and-develop department largely has failed for more than a decade. That explains the woeful state of the last-place Nationals now at least as much as an unwillingness to spend on free agents.
In many ways, these moves were coming. But I'll also admit something: When I went to spring training in February, I had long chats with both Rizzo and Martinez, individually and together. My takeaway at the time: Everyone around the Nationals was just a hair too comfortable. I didn't write it then, because a one-week glimpse at the beginning of spring training might not provide a full picture.
But as this season spiraled into a disappointment, I couldn't shake the notion: Rizzo was comfortable in a chair he had occupied for a decade-and-a-half. Martinez was comfortable because he knew the Lerners liked him. What would prompt change?
Change came Sunday. It was needed, and it should make everyone left with the Nationals uncomfortable — starting with the Lerners. Who they choose is important. More important: the process by which they come to those decisions. Be thorough. Be thoughtful. Be aggressive. Be inquisitive. Only then will we know how committed the family is to delivering a winner for Washington again.