News broke exactly one week ago that the Nationals had selected Paul Toboni as their new president of baseball operations, the 35-year-old assistant general manager of the Red Sox beating out a fairly deep field of candidates to replace Mike Rizzo on a permanent basis.
This morning, we’ll finally get the official announcement from the team about the hiring, and we’ll finally hear from Toboni (and, presumably, Nats ownership) about this incredibly important change for an organization that had (for better or worse) become a model of stability over time.
The team has scheduled a 9 a.m. press conference at Nationals Park to introduce Toboni. You can watch it live on MASN and right here on this website (with proper TV provider authentication).
We know a little bit about Toboni. He played baseball at Cal-Berkeley and got an MBA from Notre Dame. He began working for the Red Sox as an intern in 2015 and spent the last decade climbing up the organizational ladder through their scouting department before becoming an assistant GM two years ago. He is well-regarded around baseball, has a background in both scouting and analytics and has a reputation as an excellent communicator.
But we have no idea yet what Toboni thinks about the Nationals, what sold him on this job and what his plans are now that he’s officially taking the reins.
So, among the pertinent questions he figures to be asked this morning are …
* What kind of assurances did the Lerner family give him about providing resources for payroll, staffing and technology?
* Will he be hiring a GM to work underneath him, and is Mike DeBartolo a candidate for that job?
* How does he intend to conduct a managerial search, what is he looking for in that position and when does he hope to hire someone?
* What does he think about the current state of the Nationals roster, and does he believe he can supplement the core that’s already in place with more talent, or does he believe a more significant overhaul is necessary?
* Does he have an overarching philosophy on roster construction, the draft and player development?
* Will he be retaining anyone from the current front office, or will he be overhauling the entire baseball operations department?
That’s just a taste of what is probably to come this morning, and surely there will be more topics that arise during the press conference. Hopefully by the end of the session, we’ll feel like we know Toboni much better and feel like we know where things are headed for a Nationals organization reeling from a sixth straight losing season.
It’s been a long three months since Rizzo and Davey Martinez were fired, and it’s been a long wait for the season to end and the offseason to begin. Today, a new era for the Nats finally does begin, and it will be fascinating to see how it all plays out.