Paul Toboni liked his situation in Boston. He was a rising star within the Red Sox organization, a strong candidate to be named general manager and work directly underneath chief baseball officer Craig Breslow for a storied franchise currently in the postseason that already owns four World Series trophies secured over the last two decades.
When the Nationals came calling, Toboni was intrigued enough to take the interview. But he was still unsure if he wanted to uproot his young family and take over a Washington franchise that just completed its sixth straight losing season since winning its one and only World Series title.
It was during his repeated conversations with members of the Lerner family that Toboni made up his mind. He knew plenty about the Nationals. He knew very little about their owners. Once he did, the 35-year-old executive came away firmly believing they were ready to commit to his vision, which convinced him he was ready to commit to theirs.
“We were going to hold a pretty high bar if we were going to leave the Boston Red Sox organization,” he said. “And this cleared it because of that: Ownership’s love of baseball, and how competitive they are. And really, how great of people they are. That’s what I really bought into, which made my wife and I think this was the jump we were going to make.”
Thus did Toboni find himself sitting at a dais in the Nationals Park press conference room this morning, surrounded by three of the club’s principal owners (Mark Lerner, Edward Cohen and Robert Tanenbaum), his wife Danielle and their four very young boys (ages 1-6) seated in the front row watching the Nats’ new president of baseball operations introduce himself to the world.
The Nationals had not held any offseason press conference in that room in nearly six years, not since Stephen Strasburg was signed to his final, seven-year, $175 million extension in December 2019. And aside from their very first press conference announcing their purchase of the franchise from Major League Baseball in May 2006, the Lerner family had not put themselves up on that kind of stage, with nameplates, microphones and an assembled media corps able to ask them on-the-record questions on live television.
Suffice it to say, the Nationals acknowledge they’re entering uncharted territory right now with their first hiring of a lead baseball executive since Mike Rizzo was promoted from assistant GM to replace Jim Bowden in 2009.
Did the ownership group, which ran a top-10 payroll ballclub for most of the 2010s while reaching the postseason five times but has since reduced that outlay to rank among the bottom 10 in the sport, give Toboni assurances he’ll have the resources to build a winner again?
“We all gave him assurances, I would say that,” Lerner said. “The family is determined to get back to where we were a few years ago. We’re going to do what it takes. We want to do it in conjunction with sitting down with Paul when he’s ready, saying: ‘I need to do this, I need to do that.’ And we’ll take it from there. This is not a decision that has to be made today. But we will be there, and we will get back to where we know we should be.”
The task now staring Toboni in the face is immense. Three months after Rizzo and longtime manager Davey Martinez were fired, the Nationals are at a crossroads. They began a massive roster rebuild in July 2021 with the trading away of a host of veterans who helped with the 2019 World Series, and while they’ve seen many of the prospects acquired since reach the big leagues, they still stumbled to a 66-96 record this year, third-worst in the majors.
Toboni inherits a front office filled with former Rizzo hires and must decide how many he will retain and how many he’ll replace. At the top of that list is Mike DeBartolo, who served as interim GM the second half of the season and has received praise from all corners for the job he did, even though he didn’t ultimately get the permanent gig.
Toboni has yet to decide if he’ll name a GM who would work directly below him, or if he’ll merely have several assistants as Rizzo did. He spoke highly of DeBartolo (who attended today’s press conference with several other members of the baseball operations department) and hinted he expects to retain the 41-year-old executive, but wasn’t prepared to make any definitive statements about that yet.
“Prior to me accepting this job, I had about 10 people reach out just saying unbelievable things about him as a person and as a baseball mind,” Toboni said. “I told him he was shooting 10-for-10 from the line. This is before I even met him. And I think in my early interactions with him – and it’s just been two or three days – I’ve seen a lot of that. I think the world of him. I’m excited to work alongside him.”
Toboni offered even fewer details about his process for selecting a manager for the 2026 season, saying only he plans to talk with interim manager Miguel Cairo to get his insight first in the coming days before proceeding with that process.
What Toboni did share was his vision for building a successful organization. It prioritizes both traditional scouting and analytics, both of them areas of expertise for him. It prioritizes a cohesive message across all levels of the organization, from the Dominican Summer League to the major leagues. It prioritizes coaches who are both good hands-on instructors and are capable of processing and relaying the mounds of information now available throughout the sport.
And it prioritizes winning, though he was very careful not to put any particular timetable on that part of the equation.
“To me, I worry less about the timing, like: ‘We’re going to be competitive by this year,’ or ‘We’re going to make the playoffs next year or the year after, or whatever it is,’” he said. “What I’m concerned with is getting the right people that we can make the right decisions and stack them on top of each other, day after day after day. And like I said – it’s a Bill Walsh quote – the score will take care of itself. I really believe that.”
Rattling off a list of young players he believes can comprise the core of an eventual winning roster – James Wood, Daylen Lile, Dylan Crews, CJ Abrams, MacKenzie Gore – Toboni spoke optimistically about the possibilities with his new organization.
To his left, the Nationals’ managing principal owner defended the club’s actions through the difficult four years it just endured and promised greater success in the near future.
“First of all, I don’t believe that we’ve gone backwards,” Lerner said. “I think we have a lot of great talent. A lot of these young men, you haven’t even seen yet. They’re down at Rochester or Wilmington or Fredericksburg. I think we’re giving Paul a great palate of players. There’s more we need to do, obviously. And we’re not happy where we are right now; that’s why we brought in Paul. But we’re going to get back to where we’re supposed to be. That’s the commitment that we’re all making to our fans. Don’t give up on us. We’re going to be there again, I guarantee you.”