ST. LOUIS – While making a point to thank the man he has replaced and the owners who have now given him an unexpected opportunity to lead a baseball operations department, interim general manager Mike DeBartolo made clear today he has been given the authority to lead the Nationals into a new direction he believes will lift them back into regular contention after six straight losing seasons since the franchise won the World Series.

“The fans are right to be frustrated. We’re all frustrated,” DeBartolo said this afternoon in his first public comments since replacing Mike Rizzo on Sunday evening. “We have a lot of interesting, exciting, young pieces to build on. We have a lot more we need to build. Simply stepping up our game is not enough. We need real change. I’m excited to bring a fresh approach, a fresh voice to this role, and integrate more data, more technology, more innovation into our decision-making across the organization at all levels, and hopefully improve the performance of our players as well.”

The man who now reports to DeBartolo as interim manager, meanwhile, made it clear he took the job only because he first received the blessing of his predecessor and close friend.

“The only approval, the only blessing that I needed, it was from my friend, Dave Martinez,” Miguel Cairo said, his eyes welling up during his first press conference in his new role. “And the reason I’m doing this right now and I took the job is because I got his blessing. If he would have told me no, I would have gone home with him, gone to see my family. But he told me to do it, continue doing what we started.”

Cairo, who served only 1 1/2 seasons as Martinez’s bench coach but has known him since the two were teammates with the Devil Rays in 1998, will lead the existing coaching staff through the remainder of the season, with two slight changes. Catching instructor Henry Blanco will now become his bench coach, and organizational mainstay Bob Henley will return to the big league staff as field coordinator.

Stressing a desire to finish the job Martinez started but emphasizing the need to “take care of details,” Cairo may not be a leading candidate to retain this job beyond the end of the season. The club executive he now reports to, though, has visions of implementing significant changes to not only help the Nationals win more games now but in the future.

Though he spent 14 years working in the front office, the last 6 1/2 as Rizzo’s top assistant, DeBartolo comes from an entirely different background from that of his predecessor. A graduate of Tufts and Columbia Business School, the 41-year-old worked for a Boston investment advisory firm before beginning his career in baseball as an intern with the Nats in 2012.

A strong proponent of analytics, DeBartolo repeated the same message several times during his nearly 17-minute session with reporters today at Busch Stadium, citing the need to implement more data, technology and innovation across all levels of an organization that often has been viewed as taking a more old-school approach during Rizzo’s 16 1/2 years as GM.

DeBartolo was informed by ownership Sunday he was being promoted from senior vice president and assistant GM for baseball operations to interim GM with Rizzo and manager Davey Martinez fired following a series sweep at the hands of the Red Sox that left the team a season-worst 16 games under .500. The ensuing 48 hours have been a whirlwind, but in his discussion with the Lerner family, he’s been assured he’ll have the authority to implement the changes he seeks.

“Every conversation I’ve had with ownership is they want to build a winner, and they want to build a winner as soon as they can, and they’re motivated,” DeBartolo said. “There are a lot of different ways to invest in the club. Whether it’s staffing, technology, players, there are all sorts of ways to do it. They have a lot of questions about the best way to do it, and they’ve been asking a lot of good questions, and I can sense a desire from them to get us back to (being) a championship-caliber club, and it’s of great importance to me.”

Before he can focus on long-term goals, DeBartolo has two immediate areas of concern: Sunday’s MLB Draft and the July 31 trade deadline.

The Nationals hold the No. 1 pick Sunday night, and Rizzo (an accomplished scout before becoming GM in 2009) was heavily involved in the evaluation of several college and high school prospects under consideration. DeBartolo has also been involved throughout the process, though he intends to fly back to Washington on Wednesday and spend the rest of the week working alongside the club’s amateur scouting department heads (Danny Haas, Brad Ciolek, Reed Dunn) to formulate a consensus opinion on which player to select.

“They’re very well prepared,” DeBartolo said. “They’ve been working hard for this moment, almost even before the last draft ended. And so I’ll bring my own voice to that process, and I’ll work collaboratively with them, and take what they have to say and ultimately be responsible for making the picks.”

DeBartolo also will be in charge of discussions leading up to the trade deadline, something he has been intimately involved with for many years, recently in a prominent way.

“I’ve negotiated several of the trades we’ve done on my own – with Riz’s final decision, obviously – but negotiating,” he said. “I’m proud of the role I played in the Juan Soto trade in trying to identify some of the key players in that trade, including James Wood, and negotiating elements of that trade and strategizing around that trade for months in advance. I’ve executed and been heavily involved with the trade deadline for 10 years.”

DeBartolo doesn’t know yet how the Lerner family intends to decide on its permanent GM beyond this season, whether he’ll be competing with others from outside the organization for the position in 2026. But while the soft-spoken former business school graduate chose his words carefully when asked if he would like the job long-term, he made it clear he’s looking forward to the opportunity to make the case for himself over the next three months.

“I would be honored, and I care deeply about the Nationals,” he said. “Everything in my life revolves around trying to build the Nationals into a consistent, perennial contender. So I’m devoted to that. Of course it’s out of my hands, and I respect whatever decision gets made. I’ve got enough on my plate between the draft and the trade deadline, so it’s not a concern of mine.

“But the answer to your question would be: Yes.”