Happy New Year! Hope everyone out there had a wonderful holiday season and is now looking forward to what's in store in 2026.

We're only 5 1/2 weeks away, believe it or not, from pitchers and catchers. There's still a lot for the Nationals to do between now and then, but we're slowly but surely getting a sense of what this team will look like under new management.

You've got questions. I've (hopefully) got answers. You know the drill by now: Submit your inquiries in the comments section below, then check back throughout the morning for my responses ...

The Nationals entered 2025 with visions of taking a long-awaited step forward, turning the fourth season of their rebuild into their first winning season since 2019. That, of course, didn’t happen.

So as they now enter 2026, what visions exactly do this franchise have for the new year?

It’s not an easily answered question. Because of the massive changes that have taken place throughout the organization, it’s probably safe to say the goal no longer is to complete the rebuild that was kickstarted by the previous regime. The goal now, for better or worse, is to kickstart a new rebuild under new management.

That’s not going to sit well with a large segment of a fan base that already feels like its patience has been tested enough over the last four seasons. Most bought into the original plan orchestrated by Mike Rizzo, painful as that plan was to accept at the time, and were willing to see this thing through to conclusion, believing better days were coming soon.

But when ownership decided to fire Rizzo (and manager Davey Martinez) in July, then go outside the organization this fall to hire the likes of Paul Toboni, Anirudh Kilambi and Blake Butera, the reset button clearly was hit. With force.

We've reached the final week of the year, so it's time to look back at the Nationals' most significant stories of 2025. We conclude the series today with the decision to fire both Mike Rizzo and Davey Martinez in early July ...

A Nationals franchise that experienced seemingly constant change through its first decade-plus in the District had become one of the most stable organizations in baseball during its second decade in town. After swapping one manager for another every two or three years, the Nats finally stuck with Davey Martinez for more than seven years. After a chaotic run under Jim Bowden, they promoted Mike Rizzo to general manager in 2009 and kept him at the helm for more than 16 years.

That’s what made the events of July 6 so stunning. Not because pressure wasn’t already building on Rizzo and Martinez in Year Four of a rebuild that hadn’t come close to producing a winning record. But because the all-important question always lingered over the whole enterprise: Would ownership actually make those kind of major decisions on two loyal, longtime employees who brought the city its first World Series title in 95 years?

Ownership not only did make those decisions. It made them in season, and in conjunction.

After the Nationals took a 6-4 loss to the Red Sox on July 6 to complete an uninspired weekend sweep, managing principal owner Mark Lerner and Lerner Sports Group COO Alan Gottlieb informed both Rizzo and Martinez they were being fired, then stood in the home clubhouse at Nationals Park and informed the rest of the team what had just taken place.

We've reached the final week of the year, so it's time to look back at the Nationals' most significant stories of 2025. We continue the series today with the hirings of Paul Toboni as president of baseball operations, Anirudh Kilambi as general manager and Blake Butera as manager ...

It had been a long time since the Nationals found themselves searching for a new manager, longer still since they found themselves searching for a new general manager. And never before had they found themselves searching for both at the same time.

But when members of the Lerner family decided to fire both Mike Rizzo and Davey Martinez on the same Sunday afternoon in early-July, this was the situation they created for themselves. They were going to finish out the season with interim replacements. Then they were going to have to decide who should get both jobs on a permanent basis.

First up, the GM position. The Nats could have opted to retain Mike DeBartolo, Rizzo’s longtime No. 2 in the front office who admirably took over during a time of turmoil and earned praise for navigating the franchise through the MLB Draft and trade deadline. In the end, ownership chose to go completely outside the organization and start fresh with one of the sport’s up-and-comers.

Paul Toboni was only 35, but he had spent the last decade climbing the ladder in the Red Sox organization and seemingly was in line to become their GM underneath chief baseball officer Craig Breslow. Until the Nationals lured him away with an offer of an even loftier title (president of baseball operations) and the keys to the entire front office.

We've reached the final week of the year, so it's time to look back at the Nationals' most significant stories of 2025. We continue the series today with the selection of Eli Willits as the No. 1 pick in the MLB Draft ...

There’s an inherent pressure that comes with the No. 1 pick in any draft, especially when there’s no clear consensus choice. Under normal circumstances, the Nationals would’ve felt that pressure as mid-July approached and they had to decide which amateur player to snag from a pool of several viable candidate.

And then the situation became anything but normal when ownership fired longtime general manager Mike Rizzo seven days before 2025 MLB Draft.

Though the club’s scouting department – led at the time by Danny Haas, Brad Ciolek and Reed Dunn – remained intact, the man who had the final say on the pick – interim GM Mike DeBartolo – suddenly changed.

And when the Nats proceeded to take 17-year-old shortstop Eli Willits over the more-often-touted Ethan Holliday and Kade Anderson, there was immediate speculation wondering if the club’s choice had changed during that dramatic week. The club’s decision makers immediately shot down that theory, insisting the decision was “unanimous.”

Foster Griffin went to Japan three years ago not because he envisioned it would get him back to the major leagues eventually, but because at the time it was the only place that offered him a chance to be a starting pitcher.

Having bounced back and forth between Triple-A, Kansas City and Toronto while making seven MLB appearances in relief from 2020-22, the left-hander saw an appealing opportunity with the Yomiuri Giants. And once he got the blessing from his then-pregnant wife, he made the move across the Pacific and hoped for the best.

Three highly successful years later, Griffin found himself Tuesday talking about his latest opportunity: Becoming a member of the Nationals’ 2026 rotation after signing a one-year, $5.5 million contract. It’s an opportunity he couldn’t have realistically foreseen when he first left for Japan.

“It’s tough so far to wrap my head around it, to be honest with you,” he said in a Zoom session with reporters. “You hear about some guys going to Japan and coming back and getting deals. But to be honest with you, that was never at the front of my mind when I left. I just wanted to go out there and re-establish myself as a starter. I kind of feel like I got this second chance at baseball in my career, by getting the opportunity to go to Japan.”

In their quest to add some much needed experience to an otherwise young rotation, the Nationals turned their sights to Tokyo. Not for a native Japanese pitcher, but for an American-born, former first round pick who indeed resurrected his career in unexpected fashion.

The Nationals’ one-year contract with Foster Griffin has been finalized, and the 30-year-old left-hander’s signing is now official.

Griffin and the Nats had agreed to terms last Tuesday on a $5.5 million deal, plus incentives, but the contract wasn’t finalized until he passed a physical.

With that matter now resolved, the former first round pick of the Royals turns his sights toward his official return to major leagues after a highly successful, three-year stint pitching in Japan.

Griffin joined the Yomiuri Giants in 2023 after failing to stick in the big leagues and enjoyed immediate success. He went 6-5 with a 2.75 ERA and 1.074 WHIP in 20 starts during his first season abroad, then returned the following season to go 7-6 with a 2.93 ERA in 24 starts.

Griffin’s third season in Tokyo was his best; he went 6-1 with a 1.53 ERA and 0.966 WHIP in 17 starts, earning a selection to the NPB Central League All-Star Game. He allowed only one homer over 89 innings.

While acknowledging there’s much work to be done, and while making a point to focus on long-term over short-term success, new Nationals president of baseball operations Paul Toboni has also gone out of his way to praise the talent already in place and salivate at the possibility of immediate, significant improvement.

“I’ve told many of them, and I really believe it: I think there’s another gear to tap into with many of them,” Toboni said in his introductory press conference, a refrain he has repeated multiple times since.

Anirudh Kilambi offered a similar sentiment in his formal introduction Friday as the Nats’ new general manager, referencing some sage wisdom he received from his former boss in Philadelphia (a man who has taken four different franchises to the World Series during his career).

“One of the things Dave Dombrowski mentioned to me over the last few years, as he has onboarded to multiple organizations and done really well, is that they’re always really good people and really good players, even in organizations that haven’t had the most success recently. And that’s something I took with me as really great advice. There are going to be superstars wherever you go, and you need to be in a position to help them grow, whether that’s on the field or off.”

The Nationals, as currently constructed, need help. There’s no debating that. They need a reliable starting pitcher. They need to fill a gaping hole at first base. They need several experienced relievers.

Because Paul Toboni had previously suggested he might wait a while to hire a general manager, Anirudh Kilambi had little reason to expect a phone call from the Nationals’ new president of baseball operations earlier this month. Besides, Kilambi was perfectly happy in his role as an assistant GM with the Phillies, leading their research and development team, helping supplement a big-market team with big-name stars and a deep-rooted desire to win a World Series now.

Toboni, though, was keeping an open mind all along on hiring a GM this winter, instead of waiting a year to fill that all-important No. 2 role in his revamped front office. And having met Kilambi a few years ago and having heard great things about him from others in baseball since, he decided to contact the Phillies two weeks ago and request an interview.

“We could’ve waited a year or evaluated for a year, but that wouldn’t have allowed for us to push forward at the rate that we would’ve wanted to in year one,” Toboni said. “And year one’s a really important year. Ani in many ways helps us with that, and obviously he’s going to help us way beyond that first year. … I was very comfortable keeping this vacant if we didn’t come onto the right fit. Ani just happens to be an exceptional fit for us.”

Barely two weeks removed from their first phone call, the Nationals officially hired Kilambi as their new GM, giving Toboni one of the sport’s brightest young data minds as his top lieutenant in a front office that bears very little resemblance to the one that had been in place since the franchise arrived in D.C. more than two decades ago.

At 35, Toboni already is the youngest president of baseball operations in the majors. At 31, Kilambi becomes the youngest GM. And that’s to say nothing of 33-year-old manager Blake Butera or the countless other under-40 executives and coaches the Nats have hired in the last two months to remake an organization mired in six consecutive losing seasons since reaching the ultimate peak in 2019.

Though on-field changes have been minimal at this point, with the promise of much more to come before pitchers and catchers report, this has already been the most consequential offseason in Nationals history off the field.

Never in the previous two-plus decades had the club hired both a head of baseball operations and a manager during the same winter. And those are far from the only new people running the show. The front office has been totally remade. So has the coaching staff. And when it’s all said and done, the entire player development operation is likely to have been overhauled as well.

On top of all that, the types of people the Nationals have been hiring for all of these positions bear little resemblance to those who previously held those jobs. Nearly every one of them is in his 30s (or even 20s, in a few cases). Nearly every one of them has a data-heavy background. A good number of them have zero prior big league experience, and some of those don’t even have prior professional experience, coming instead from college programs and private pitching and hitting labs.

While it mirrors in some ways what other organizations were already doing over the last decade, it’s probably taken the young, analytics-heavy mantra to a whole new level. Paul Toboni, 35, is the youngest president of baseball operations in the sport. Anirudh Kilambi, 31, is the youngest general manager in the sport. Blake Butera, 33, is the youngest manager in the sport. And they haven’t been surrounded by older, more-experienced cohorts. They’ve been surrounded by contemporaries.

Is this going to work? Only time will tell. Three years from now, we may look back and praise the Nationals for brilliantly identifying the next wave of great executives and coaches before any of them were on other teams’ radars. Or we may look back and ask: “What on earth were they thinking?”

Wednesday night’s news that the Nationals are hiring Anirudh Kilambi as general manager surely caught a number of people by surprise. President of baseball operations Paul Toboni said as recently as last month he didn’t expect to add a GM to his front office yet, seemingly content with the organizational flow chart that had come together since his hiring in late-September.

But then came word of the hiring of Kilambi, a 31-year-old data guru who spent the last decade working for the Rays and Phillies and now gets his highest-profile job to date as one of the youngest GMs in major league history.

It might leave you a bit confused. Fortunately, we’re here to answer some of the questions you likely have right now. If nothing else, consider this a placeholder until we get a chance to interview both Toboni and Kilambi later this week …

Q: So, Anirudh Kilambi is actually Mike Rizzo’s replacement?
A: Only in title. And even then, it’s only in partial title. Though he typically was referred to as the Nats’ general manager, Rizzo officially was president of baseball operations and general manager. In short, he was the guy in charge of the entire front office, and he chose not to promote or hire someone to be the GM beneath him, preferring to employ several assistant GMs and several special assistants to the GM.

Q: So, what is Kilambi’s role compared to Toboni’s role?
A: Toboni is the guy in charge. He makes the final decision on free agent signings, trades, etc. Kilambi will serve as his right-hand man, with an emphasis on all matters related to analytics, data and technology. That’s his background with Tampa Bay and Philadelphia, and he was widely regarded throughout baseball as a top young mind in that area, especially the job he did helping to acquire and develop lesser-known pitchers into quality big leaguers during his seven years with the Rays.

The Nationals are hiring Anirudh Kilambi as general manager, giving president of baseball operations Paul Toboni a second-in-command executive with a strong analytics reputation within the sport after a decade working for the Rays and Phillies.

Kilambi’s hiring, expected to be made official later this week, was confirmed by a source familiar with the decision and was first reported by ESPN.

Since Toboni was hired to take over baseball operations in late-September, the question loomed whether the 35-year-old executive would hire a GM to work underneath him. Toboni proceeded to hire former Red Sox colleagues Devin Pearson and Justin Horowitz as assistant GMs and retained former interim GM Mike DeBartolo as senior vice president and assistant GM, but suggested last month he wasn’t planning to also hire a GM for now.

In the end, Toboni did bring in someone to work directly beneath him, poaching Kilambi from the Phillies, where he spent the last four seasons as an assistant GM in charge of the franchise’s research and development department.

At 31, Kilambi becomes one of the youngest GMs in baseball and follows former Giants executive Farhan Zaidi as the first top MLB executives of South Asian descent. Kilambi is a first-generation Indian American.

At long last, the Nationals have begun acquiring players. It began with the pre-Winter Meetings trade of Jose A. Ferrer to the Mariners for Harry Ford and Isaac Lyon. It continued with the selection of Griff McGarry in the Rule 5 Draft. And now over the last two days, they have traded Jake Bennett to the Red Sox for Luis Perales and signed Foster Griffin after a successful three-year stint pitching in Japan.

Blockbuster moves? Maybe not. But for the first time, we're starting to get a sense of president of baseball operations Paul Toboni's method of roster-building, while also getting a sense of how much he's likely (or allowed) to spend this winter.

There will be plenty more acquisitions to come in the days and weeks ahead. But for now, let's take a moment to discuss what has already transpired, and wonder what might still be in store before pitchers and catchers report to West Palm Beach in a mere eight weeks.

As always, submit your questions in the comments section below, then check back throughout the morning for my responses.

The first free agent signed by the Nationals’ new front office is a former first-round pick who went to Japan to resurrect his pitching career.

The Nats are in agreement with left-hander Foster Griffin on a one-year contract that guarantees $5.5 million plus incentives, a source familiar with the terms confirmed. The deal, which was first reported by FanSided.com, is contingent on the 30-year-old passing a physical.

It’s a bit of an unconventional first foray into free agency for new president of baseball operations Paul Toboni, though one that has become increasingly popular among other organizations willing to take a modest financial risk on former big leaguers who parlay success in Asia into major league offers.

Originally the 28th-overall pick of the 2014 Draft by the Royals, Griffin made his major league debut in 2020 and has made seven total big league appearances with Kansas City and Toronto, allowing six earned runs in eight innings. Released by the Blue Jays in November 2022, the 6-foot-3 southpaw then signed with the Yomiuri Giants and turned his career around.

In three seasons pitching in Japan, Griffin went 18-10 with a 2.57 ERA and 1.033 WHIP, working as a starter. The lefty peaked this summer, going 6-1 with a 1.62 ERA, 0.949 WHIP and 77 strikeouts in 78 innings, earning an NPB All-Star selection before being sidelined by a leg injury.

We’ll never know if there was a realistic chance of Josh Bell returning to the Nationals for another season, whether the new front office valued him the same way the previous front office did. Regardless, it’s too late now after the big slugger chose a new home for the 2026 season.

Bell agreed to a one-year, $7 million contract with the Twins, according to multiple reports Monday, taking his big bat and popular persona to Minnesota. The 33-year-old is expected to see time both at first base and designated hitter, bolstering a lineup that saw only one player hit more than his 22 homers this season.

The Twins become Bell’s seventh different club in seven seasons, a nomadic career he never desired but has been forced to accept due to a combination of trades and short-term contracts. Originally drafted by the Pirates in 2011, he spent his first five seasons in Pittsburgh, making an All-Star team, before he was traded to the Nationals on Christmas Eve 2020 for pitchers Wil Crowe and Eddy Yean (who recently returned to the Nats on a minor league deal).

Bell quickly embraced D.C. and expressed a desire to stay here long-term. But when the organization opted to tear down the remnants of its World Series roster and rebuild with younger players, Bell wound up on the trading block. He was paired up with star outfielder Juan Soto in the August 2022 blockbuster that brought five prospects to the Nationals, with Bell’s inclusion in the deal necessary to acquire pitching prospect Jarlin Susana.

Bell spent only two months in San Diego before becoming a free agent, and he proceeded to sign a two-year, $33 million deal with Cleveland … only to be traded to Miami during that first year. He was then traded to Arizona at the 2024 deadline before again reaching free agency last winter.

Why did it take two decades before the Nationals signed their first free agent from Asia?

“That market is a market that is built on relationships,” former general manager Mike Rizzo said. “You can’t go down there and just pick and choose a guy you want to scout and try and sign him. That market, I dabbled in it when I was with Arizona a few times. And here, we’ve tried at several Asian players. And it’s just … you’re always on the outside looking in, because you don’t have the network there, the groundwork there, that you need to have to create these relationships.”

Rizzo said this in January, shortly after signing Shinnosuke Ogasawara to a two-year, $3.5 million contract. It was significant news, not so much because of the actual player who was signed, but because it marked the first Japanese free agent signed by the Nats since they arrived in town in 2005.

Rizzo, of course, is no longer GM of the franchise. And in a bit of irony, Ogasawara made his major league debut (and trailed 4-0 before recording an out) hours before Rizzo and manager Davey Martinez were fired.

The left-hander went on to make one more start, then made 21 relief appearances in August and September, ultimately completing his rookie season with a gaudy 6.98 ERA and 1.552 WHIP. Paul Toboni’s new front office wound up removing the left-hander from the 40-man roster, outrighting him to Triple-A Rochester, where he’ll likely be the highest-paid player on the roster in 2026.

The Nationals agreed to terms on a 2026 contract with Josiah Gray on Friday, avoiding arbitration with the right-hander, who is attempting to make it back from major elbow surgery.

Gray agreed to a deal that will pay him $1.35 million, a source familiar with the terms confirmed, matching his salary from this season. The vast majority of players who are arbitration-eligible receive raises through the process, but he was unlikely to be awarded one because he did not pitch at all in the majors in 2025.

Had the two sides not been able to agree to a salary on their own, they would’ve needed to file for arbitration next month, submitting competing offers and then making their cases before a three-judge panel in February.

Gray joins catcher Riley Adams ($1 million) as players who have avoided arbitration with the Nationals so far. They are still attempting to work out deals with five other arbitration-eligible players: second baseman Luis García Jr., shortstop CJ Abrams, left-hander MacKenzie Gore and right-handers Jake Irvin and Cade Cavalli.

An All-Star in 2023 and the team’s Opening Day starter the following season, Gray hasn’t pitched in a big league game since April 4, 2024, after which he reported forearm soreness. Initially diagnosed with a flexor strain, he was back pitching in minor league rehab games two months later and appeared to be on the verge of coming off the injured list when he reported new soreness in his elbow following a June 30 start with Triple-A Rochester.

With a new president of baseball operations and a new manager, there were no shortage of Nationals-related topics to bring up at the Winter Meetings this week. Paul Toboni and Blake Butera were peppered with all sorts of questions during their three days in Orlando, and while some of those garnered the immediate headlines, a few more didn’t make the first cut.

With that in mind, let’s go back through the notebook and present Toboni and Butera’s thoughts on some other topics we didn’t get to earlier in the week …

* While we did print their answers to questions about the possibility of trading CJ Abrams, we didn’t get to the question of what position the new brain trust expects him to play if he’s not dealt this winter.

Abrams’ defensive struggles this season were well-documented. Of the 22 major league shortstops who played enough innings to qualify, he ranked 19th in Defensive Runs Saved (minus-6), 20th in Outs Above Average (minus-11) and 21st in Fangraphs’ all-encompassing defensive metric (minus-3.2).

Much of those negative numbers came during a particularly rough second half. After committing nine errors in his first 89 games, Abrams was charged with 13 over his final 53 games (including four during a five-day span in September).

Paul Toboni and Blake Butera each had attended several previous Winter Meetings in their roles with the Red Sox and Rays, respectively. Toboni had participated in high-level meetings in the organization’s suite, during which free agents were signed and trades were completed. Butera had met with fellow minor league managers and farm directors, and had even been one of the club representatives sitting at Tampa Bay’s table at the annual Rule 5 Draft.

Neither man, however, had ever been in these kind of positions of authority. Toboni had never been the one giving the final green light on a trade, nor led the meetings with top agents like Scott Boras. Butera had never been interviewed by reporters, nor asked to pose for photos with the likes of Terry Francona and Dave Roberts.

This week’s event in Orlando was both familiar and unfamiliar to the two 30-somethings now controlling the fate of the Nationals.

Asked if this feels different from his previous times attending the Winter Meetings, Butera smiled and said: “It does. One hundred percent.”

This felt decidedly different for the Nationals as a whole. The last time someone other than Mike Rizzo led baseball operations at the meetings was 2008. The last time someone other than Davey Martinez held a managerial press conference at the event was 2016.

ORLANDO, Fla. – The new Nationals front office’s first Rule 5 Draft pick is an experienced right-hander with elite stuff and high strikeout numbers, but a penchant for walking batters at an alarming rate.

Paul Toboni and Co. decided to take a shot at Griff McGarry, a University of Virginia graduate who spent the last five seasons climbing the ladder in the Phillies’ farm system but never got a shot in the majors because of his inability to consistently throw strikes.

McGarry, 26, was selected with the third pick in this afternoon’s Rule 5 Draft, behind fellow righties RJ Petit (Rockies) and Jedixson Paez (White Sox). The Nationals will give him a shot to make the Opening Day roster, then hope to keep him on the major league roster the entire season without offering him back to Philadelphia.

“The stuff stands out, the velocity,” manager Blake Butera said. “I’ve also heard, even since we just took him, some people have reached out to say what kind of kid he is, what kind of worker he is. We’re just excited to get somebody with that kind of stuff, obviously coming from a great organization. And you build in the work ethic and the character, it seems like a pretty good fit.”

The good with McGarry: His mid-to-upper 90s fastball, and multiple sharp breaking balls, all rate as elite pitches according to advanced metrics. Across 287 minor league innings since 2021, he has allowed only 182 hits while striking out 420 batters. His 13.34 strikeouts per nine innings this season ranked fourth across the entirety of Minor League Baseball, and the Phillies named him their organizational pitcher of the year.