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Of the 37 players to suit up for the Nats so far this season, 21 were here in the Mike Rizzo era. Success via new coaching is one thing, but how much credit should Rizzo get for building the shell?
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00:00Berries for Lugo wrote a piece that came out yesterday in The Athletic
00:05where he had gone to lunch with and talked to Mike Rizzo,
00:09the longtime president of baseball operations with the Washington Nationals,
00:13who was fired about a year ago at this time, right around July 4th.
00:18Paul Toboni came in, hired an entirely new staff.
00:22They've had an entirely new analytics-driven philosophy,
00:25and the results have been fantastic.
00:27You and I talked this week about the one-year anniversary of Davey Martinez
00:32saying it's never on the coaches
00:33and how this season has been a gigantic referendum, it feels like,
00:37on the old coaching staff and some of the old coaching philosophies.
00:41I don't feel as negatively about Mike Rizzo and the job he did
00:47as I do the coaching staff specifically around Davey and Davey Martinez even.
00:52I think Rizzo had a longer run of success and did a lot more good
00:56and the balance sheet is largely positive for Rizzo over the duration of his time here.
01:01Whereas if you look at Davey Martinez's run here, Danny,
01:04it was basically the second half of the 2019 season, which was unbelievable.
01:08Which was great.
01:09Separate that, and it was just all losing, essentially.
01:12And it's not just losing.
01:13This is the part I always want to hammer.
01:16Maniakta lost.
01:17Frank Robinson lost.
01:18A lot of teams here lost a lot of games.
01:21It's the same beat-your-head-against-the-wall, guys getting picked off,
01:26guys getting cut off men, guys throwing to the wrong base.
01:29The same, oh my God, are we bleeping kidding mistakes for however long?
01:34And it's just nothing different.
01:36The story, though, is really interesting.
01:38I think people should check it out in The Athletic.
01:40I enjoyed it because the Rizzo era and the recency of the several years
01:48in the post-World Series lack of success is so complicated,
01:53especially looking back now.
01:55I mean, this guy and Davey Martinez, to a large extent,
02:00are the reasons why the Nats won a World Series.
02:02October 2019 is one of the great months of my life.
02:05And the second half of that baseball season will have forever.
02:09And they built not just that team that won the World Series,
02:12but several better teams than that, honestly, that could have and didn't,
02:15that ran into oddities or wackiness in the playoffs
02:18or came up small somewhere along the line.
02:21But let's go through this story.
02:24So Sperluga starts the story.
02:26They're sitting at lunch.
02:26He says Rizzo's in shorts and a T-shirt.
02:28He's 65 years old.
02:30He's smoking a pre-lunch cigar.
02:32Club sandwich is on his way.
02:33He's got two replace hips.
02:36He's throwing pitches to his son, Sonny, who's three years old now.
02:39And he's kind of living his first summer without baseball in decades.
02:43He said, when was the last time Mike Rizzo didn't have baseball games
02:48to attend to all summer?
02:50And Rizzo's answer is, are you counting high school and college baseball?
02:54And he says, yes.
02:54He goes, well, then not in 50-plus years.
02:57He's going back to like when he was 11, 12 years old.
02:59But he says, I'm energized.
03:00I feel great.
03:01I'm ready to do what I do.
03:03And Sperluga points out that while there's a lot of negativity around the Rizzo regime
03:07here from the last several years, understandably, during that 16-year run
03:12and during the 2019 World Series, that ended an eight-season stretch in which
03:17the Nationals won more than any other team other than the Dodgers.
03:20There was a time when the Nats did draft well.
03:23Rizzo, for his credit and to his credit over 16 years, when he ran the Nats, I think had
03:29the best trade resume of any executive in the sport.
03:32Certainly up there, right?
03:33You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who had more trade success during those 16 years
03:38in baseball, any team, with any number of executives than Rizzo did.
03:42So I give him a lot of credit for that.
03:43The Soto deal saves his bacon.
03:45If he hadn't made the Juan Soto deal, imagine how bleak this thing would have been the last
03:50couple years.
03:50Frankly, he may not have lasted as long as he did.
03:53And imagine what this thing would look like for Paul Taboni now, if not for James Wood
03:57and C.J. Abrams, the McKenzie-Gordale that they've turned into a massive upgrade to the
04:04minor league system with five prospects.
04:05But Rizzo deserves a ton of credit for that.
04:08You have to acknowledge that that was a ballsy trade that a lot of teams, a lot of GMs, a
04:13lot of executives would not have made, and it's going to go down as one of the great
04:16returns in the history of any sport.
04:18Absolutely.
04:19And, you know, the pivot was there.
04:21It was the right one.
04:22But for every one of those deals, there's a Wilson Ramos for Matt Capps.
04:25There's Trey Turner and Joe Ross for Steven Souza.
04:28There are remarkable...
04:29The Doug Fister-Lombardozzi trades.
04:31How did you pull that one from there kind of trades?
04:34Lane Thomas for John Lester after the trade deadline somehow.
04:37Or does it go, yeah, we didn't fax you in time.
04:39It still goes through.
04:39Denard Spann for Alex Meyer.
04:42Do you remember that one?
04:42Of course I do.
04:43I mean, the list is nearly endless in that regard.
04:46So that really was what it was.
04:48Because after the Strasburg-Harper-Rendon triumvirate, which is the core of an excellent team, and
04:55then two of those three guys are three of the five reasons they won a World Series.
04:59It's a lot of Jake Johansson and Carter Keboom and Seth Romero and Mason Denneberg and fruitless
05:06draft classes.
05:07I mean, I don't mean like, oh, below average or mired in lack of production.
05:10And it's not like some second or third rounder would come through and take those guys' place.
05:15There was a dearth.
05:17I understand you're picking to the back of the first round.
05:19That's your prisoner of your own success.
05:21Even still within that grading on a curve, there's no other way around it.
05:24It was disastrous.
05:25The conversation he had with Barry wasn't overly revealing.
05:29As for Luger rights, Rizzo's not going to go all in on the learners, but there is an
05:33undercurrent of, quote, well, if you would have spent on veterans to supplement the young
05:37core we had gathered then, dot, dot, dot.
05:39And I think that's reality.
05:41Like, that's not an excuse.
05:42You and I said this all of last year.
05:44The rebuild didn't go terribly, thanks to the Soto deal.
05:47The rest of it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of draft classes and development.
05:51But it almost doesn't matter because in one fell swoop with that trade, you've got a
05:55core now that you can build the whole thing around if you supplement with money and ownership
05:59didn't send reinforcements over that hill.
06:01But what's for Luka points out is that 21 of the 37 guys that the Nationals have used
06:06so far this season for what they're doing and overachieving and being a current playoff
06:11team in the wild card were brought into the organization by Rizzo.
06:15And that's where Rizzo, I think, is taking a bit of a victory lap and kind of suggesting,
06:19yeah, we knew what we were doing.
06:21It looks a little bit better now than it did a year ago at this time.
06:23To that, I would say, though, this regime is getting a lot more out of them.
06:28Now, that's not a Rizzo point as much as it is.
06:30Again, I'm going to the coaching level, the instruction level.
06:33I think at the minor league levels, player development, the staff that's in place,
06:37the hitting and pitching instructors, the people working hands-on in the cages are getting
06:42more out of prospects than they did previously.
06:45Obviously, this isn't even a front office point other than you're the ones doing the hiring
06:50and setting the agenda from a paradigm and philosophical standpoint and a technology and
06:55an R&D standpoint.
06:56And maybe this is a lesson learned.
06:58You know, Dan Quinn always talks about all the stuff he learned in Atlanta.
07:00Maybe wherever Rizzo goes, his right-hand man, you know, now his Mike DiBartolo II is going
07:07to have a bigger, more influential, powerful voice, and they're going to lean more into the data
07:11and the technology because it was clearly a shortcoming, and it's been proven this year.
07:15But I think to just say, well, look, you know, Jacob Young's having a really good year.
07:21That was our seventh-round pick.
07:22That is true.
07:23But Jacob Young, when he was coached by your guys doing it the way that the previous regime
07:29wanted, is not this Jacob Young.
07:31This is a new Jacob Young with a new approach and a new swing, and it's all been redesigned.
07:35K.Bert Ruiz, we gave him the extension.
07:37Everyone made fun of us.
07:38Now, look, he's got an 800 OPS.
07:40Yes, that's true.
07:42He wouldn't have an 800 OPS if Davey was managing, and Darnell Coles was his hitting coach.
07:46Yeah, he'd also be the frying pan back there that he was under you guys for years.
07:50He was a disastrous catcher.
07:52Not anymore.
07:52And there was some of this at the minor league level, too, where he says, look at the minor
07:56league system and how much better a lot of our guys are.
07:59We knew they would come on.
08:00It would just take some time.
08:01As if, you know, Yohandi Morales or Seaver King or some of the guys that they drafted where
08:07they did, who are now flourishing this year, like it was just inevitable.
08:11Yeah, time wasn't the variable.
08:12Right.
08:12Like this new regime came in or not.
08:14And to me, both things can be a little bit true.
08:18Like, I never thought Yohandi Morales was a bad pick at 40.
08:20He's a talented guy.
08:21I didn't hate the Seaver King pick, although I was always told that they would have taken
08:25Seaver King over, you know, Connor Griffin or over Nick Kurtz and a couple like that's
08:30bad.
08:31But I digress.
08:33At least you've got to acknowledge, though, that the reason these guys are coming on is
08:39based on the instructing and the coaching that they're getting.
08:42Yohandi Morales told me straight up a couple weeks ago that his use of the traject machine
08:46that they use pregame in Rochester, which they never had until this year, is the single
08:50biggest reason for his hitting development this year.
08:52It is a direct way of saying what is happening with him would not have happened last year.
08:56You see what I'm saying?
08:57I mean, guys in a lot of places have career years for whatever reason.
09:01That's true.
09:01You look at some up and down players, change of scenery, some coach gets in the rear,
09:06says the right thing.
09:07I mean, the Daniel Murphy story and Kevin Long, it's not just Kevin Long.
09:12There's a million of those guys.
09:14You know, it used to be Dave Duncan in Seattle, St. Louis rather, would fix every pitcher's career,
09:17turn a guy that was a former prospect, who was a washout.
09:20into a superstar.
09:22That's time in memoriam.
09:23So that's not that crazy of a thing to have that happen.
09:26When the entire roster's doing it, you don't get to get credit.
09:30Sorry.
09:31You know what I mean?
09:31Like, yeah, you scouted as good or as whatever as anybody else.
09:35And that's fine.
09:36Good for you.
09:36A lot of guys had Bryce Harper 1-1.
09:38A lot of guys had Steven Strasburg 1-1.
09:40A lot of guys could tell that James Wood had a chance to be pretty good.
09:43When every single player to a man, save Daylon Lyle, who I think was just beyond exceptional
09:47at the end of last season, has progressed and not regressed under you, or as soon as you're
09:53gone, it's hard not to do more than correlation.
09:57There's some causation there, bro.
09:58Rizzo says in the story that he's hoping to get back into baseball, would love to run a
10:03front office again.
10:04And I hope he gets that chance.
10:05I don't know that he will at 65, the way the game is trending.
10:09But he talked about maybe being just a senior advisor or helping somebody out.
10:13And he could definitely be an asset in that way.
10:14There's no doubt in my mind.
10:16But I think he could still be a successful GM where they spend some money.
10:21He is great at trades.
10:23Yes.
10:23And if he leans into an assistant like a DiBartolo, who's a smart R&D person, and is welcoming
10:32to some of that even more so than they were here, and kind of turns over a new leaf in
10:36that regard, I think it could work if you're in a Detroit, as an example, or like Dave Dombrowski,
10:41who's an old-school guy in Philly, having plenty of success now, where they can spend
10:45money, where ownership gives you money.
10:46He played a little checkbook baseball here.
10:48You were able to sign Strauss for 175 and 245.
10:52You were able to sign Scherzer for 210.
10:54You were able to sign Worth for 126.
10:57You've got to add and supplement that way.
10:59If they're going to operate in D.C. like they're the A's or the Rays, I don't think Rizzo's
11:05the guy to do that.
11:06You're not going to cut corners the way that this group's going to with the tech and the
11:12data and all that.
11:13Everyone in this front office is half his age or less, and that's where the league is going.
11:17Yeah.
11:17It's younger.
11:18It's MIT over, I drove 7,000 miles to see a 165-pound switch hitting second baseman.
11:27You know what I mean?
11:27The numbers are winning because it's more efficient.
11:30There is still a role.
11:31His staff's already ruled that kid out because of his swing decision.
11:34Yeah, there is a role, as you said, for the old-school baseball man.
11:38That's still welcome, but I don't think he's running a team anytime soon.
11:41Well, and my point is, I think he could successfully, if he got the opportunity, with some money to
11:45spend.
11:46But it doesn't matter because here they don't spend money.
11:49They haven't in years.
11:51Hopefully they will again at some point.
11:52But if they are going to be the Brewers or the Rays, you need a front office.
11:57Like, like, like, like, like, like, like.
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