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?”
We’re going to get a chance to hear from both Toboni and Kilambi this afternoon during a joint Zoom session with reporters, Kilambi’s official introduction following his hiring Wednesday. It will be fascinating to hear what the new GM’s exact role will be, and how he’ll attempt to incorporate the data-focused success he had with the Rays and Phillies into the Nationals’ revamped front office.
Be sure to check back later this afternoon for that article. In the meantime, let’s open the floor to all of you. Having had 2 1/2 months now to process all the changes big and small, what’s your opinion of the state of the Nats? Are you optimistic it’s all going to work out? Are you pessimistic about the viability of such a young and inexperienced group? Are you frustrated at the prospect of a new rebuild on the heels of another rebuild gone south?
Please leave your comments below and help us get a sense of the fans’ buy-in to this new era of Nationals baseball.