While making a point to say every hitter on his roster will have his own strengths and weaknesses and individualized game plans, Matt Borgschulte does believe in an overarching philosophy as the Nationals’ new hitting coach. And it really gets to the entire point of the game of baseball.

“The goal of the offense is to score runs,” he said. “And we’re going to value every aspect of hitting that we can to maximize that run scoring potential of the offense. Whether that’s hitting the ball over the fence, in the gap and driving for extra bases, or whether that’s taking a good at-bat, taking our walks and really owning the zone.”

Officially hired last month, Borgschulte fits the basic profile of manager Blake Butera’s new coaching staff. Like so many others he’s now working with in the big leagues, he never actually played in the big leagues. And at 35, he’s still extremely young, potentially younger than one or more of his players if the Nats end up signing a veteran or two free agents before spring training.

But Borgschulte does have something Butera and many others on the staff do not have: Actual MLB coaching experience. He spent 2022-24 as the Orioles’ co-hitting coach with Ryan Fuller. Then he spent the 2025 season as the Twins’ hitting coach, losing that job after manager Rocco Baldelli was fired.

In Baltimore, he oversaw an incredibly young but talented lineup that included Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman and Jackson Holliday, one that ranked among the most productive units in baseball while winning 101 games in 2023 and 91 games in 2024.

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 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.

Merry Christmas to all and to all happy holidays!

As we wake up this morning to see what new things from our personal wish lists Santa left under the tree, there are still plenty of things on the Nationals’ wish list that need to be checked off before the start of the next season.

To be sure, it has been a busy offseason for the Nats. Paul Toboni was hired as the new president of baseball operations at the end of the regular season. He has made numerous hires to fill out his restructured front office, including Anirudh Kilambi as the general manager to work directly below him.

Blake Butera was named the eighth full-time manager in club history. And at the ripe age of 33, he’s by far the youngest. He’s been working to fill out his coaching staff, which we know includes the return of Sean Doolittle.

Toboni has made some of his first roster moves since taking over the Nats as well. He traded left-hander Jose A. Ferrer to the Mariners for top catching prospect Harry Ford and right-hander Isaac Lyon.

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?”

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.

ORLANDO, Fla. – Though filling out what’s now a 12-man coaching staff has occupied the majority of Blake Butera’s time the last month, the Nationals’ new manager has also made a point to reach out to his entire roster of players and start to develop relationships with every one of them long before they report to spring training.

His biggest takeaway from those conversations? These players are extremely motivated to get better, and they’re ready to put in the work that will be required.

“Obviously, I didn’t get to talk to these guys until after I signed on for the job,” Butera said. “But I told (president of baseball operations Paul Toboni) right away: ‘Man, I was really excited about this.’”

The roster Butera inherits is one of the youngest and least experienced in baseball. It’s coming off a hugely disappointing season that included 96 losses, bottom-of-the-league rankings in a number of meaningful categories and the midsummer firings of their longtime general manager and manager.

Several players have acknowledged the team’s struggles in fundamental areas and a desire to clean that up, no matter their own personal accomplishments. And they quickly conveyed that message to their rookie manager.

ORLANDO, Fla. – Though they could still add a few more names in the next week or two, the Nationals’ 2026 coaching staff essentially is complete. It’s a group featuring a bunch of 30-somethings, most of them having never played in the major leagues, more than half of them having never coached in the major leagues.

Blake Butera, at 33 the majors’ youngest manager in more than five decades, has assembled a diverse staff that features a few experienced coaches but plenty of others who have taken a less conventional path to D.C.

The oldest member of the staff is 50-year-old Michael Johns, who becomes Butera’s bench coach after two seasons as first base coach with the Rays, for whom he also managed in the minors for nine seasons. The only others in their 40s are catching coach/run game coordinator Bobby Wilson (42), who spent the last five seasons as Rangers catching coach following a 10-year playing career, and assistant pitching/bullpen coach Dustin Glant (44), who has some minor league coaching experience but most recently served as pitching coach at Indiana University.

Besides Wilson, the only others to play in the big leagues were Sean Doolittle (39), who returns as assistant pitching coach, and first base/outfield/baserunning coach Corey Ray (31), who appeared in one game for the Brewers in 2021 before becoming a minor league manager in the Cubs organization.

The seven staff members who have coached in the majors before are Johns, Doolittle, Wilson, field coordinator Tyler Smarslok (33, formerly Marlins first base coach), hitting coach Matt Borgschulte (35, formerly Orioles and Twins hitting coach), pitching coach Simon Mathews (30, formerly Reds assistant pitching coach) and bullpen catcher/development coach Grant Anders (29, formerly Orioles development coach).

As the baseball world comes together in Orlando this week for the annual Winter Meetings, so many questions will swirl around the industry.

Which free agents will sign? What big names will be traded? Which teams will appear to be going all-in for 2026?

Unfortunately, sometimes the Winter Meetings leave a lot of questions unanswered. On the other hand, sometimes we get an eventful week where a lot of questions are answered, leading to more intriguing follow-up ones for the upcoming season.

For the Nationals, there are a number of questions revolving around them and new president of baseball operations Paul Toboni this week. One of them was answered last night with the Nats trading left-hander Jose A. Ferrer to the Mariners for two prospects: catcher Harry Ford (Mariners' No. 4 prospect per MLB Pipeline and No. 6 per Baseball America; No. 3 catching prospect in baseball per Pipeline) and right-hander Isaac Lyon (2025 10th-round pick out of Grand Canyon University).

We might not get the answers to the rest of them, but here are some other questions we should get answers to …

For most, Thanksgiving is a time for the familiar. For traditions, whether that comes in the form of the food we eat, the family members and friends we gather with, the football games and parades we watch. It’s the ultimate comfort holiday.

For the Nationals, this Thanksgiving is all about the unfamiliar.

Think about it. For the first time in 17 years, there’s a brand-new person in charge of baseball operations. For the first time in eight years, there’s a brand-new person in charge of the major league team. There are tons of new people working underneath both of those leaders. And we expect there to be a decent number of new players taking the field come Opening Day 2026.

So, instead of celebrating familiar traditions today, perhaps it’s time we all embraced change. Instead of turkey, how about serving lasagna for dinner? Instead of pumpkin pie, how about chocolate cake for dessert? And instead of football, how about watching old reruns of the 2019 World Series?

Not ready for that kind of dramatic change quite yet? OK, fair enough. Change can be difficult. And maybe it’s best to take baby steps, not giant leaps all at once.

Throughout this offseason’s hiring process, we’ve been able to connect some dots to people who we wouldn’t have otherwise believed to be connected.

Despite operating in varying roles in the same division for a long time, the Nationals’ new president of baseball operations Paul Toboni (who spent the last 10 years with the Red Sox) and new manager Blake Butera (who spent the last the last 10 years with the Rays) had never met in person before Butera’s first interview. In fact, Monday’s introductory press conference for the new skipper was only the second time they had met in person.

Toboni came to learn more about Butera from a phone call from Hall of Famer Mike Piazza, who employed the new Nats manager as his bench coach for Team Italy in the 2023 World Baseball Classic. Butera is very close with new Orioles manager Craig Albernaz, who coached him during his only two seasons as a professional baseball player in the lower levels of the Rays minor league system.

And so on and so forth.

Little did we know that when the Nats’ new leadership hired a previously unknown name as their new pitching coach that 1) They would also be retaining at least one beloved holdover from the previous coaching staff and 2) That person would already have a close relationship with the new guy in charge of pitching.

As significant as Blake Butera’s hiring was – and, let’s be clear, it’s incredibly significant – there has been just as much interest in learning who will fill out the new Nationals manager’s coaching staff.

Given Butera’s almost unprecedented youth (at 33, he’s the youngest major league manager since 1972) and lack of experience (he never played, coached nor managed above Single-A), conventional wisdom said he would look to surround himself with older, more experienced coaches.

That’s partially the case so far, but not entirely the case.

The Nats are still in the process of hiring several more staff members, so we don’t know what the full makeup will look like yet. But while Butera has hired a more experienced bench coach in 50-year-old Michael Johns, his pitching coach (Simon Mathews) is actually only 30. And while the other three known members of the staff (Bobby Wilson, Sean Doolittle, Tyler Smarslok) all have some big league coaching experience, their ages range between 33 and 42.

“I don’t think we really set out to either hire for or not for experience,” Butera said. “I think what was first and foremost was that we wanted to bring in people who align with our values. We wanted people that would help hold each other accountable, come in with a tremendous amount of work ethic and make sure they were in this thing for the right reasons.”

When Blake Butera steps into the visiting dugout at Wrigley Field for the Nationals’ Opening Day game against the Cubs on March 26, not only will it be the 33-year-old’s first time in a major league dugout, it will be the first time he’s been in any dugout since 2022, his last season as manager of the Charleston RiverDogs in the Rays’ minor league system.

The Rays had since moved Butera into a front office role. In 2023, he was Tampa Bay's assistant field coordinator. And for the past two years, he’s been the Rays senior director of player development.

That experience helped make Butera one of the fast-rising names around baseball, eventually landing him on new Nationals president of baseball operations Paul Toboni’s list of managerial candidates and then as the choice to become the youngest major league manager since the Twins hired Frank Quilici in 1972 (also 33).

“I obviously enjoyed my time managing with the Rays and then when they brought this next opportunity up to me, it was something that was obviously on a broader spectrum, with a lot more players, a lot more staff members to oversee,” Butera said of his move to the Rays front office during his introductory press conference at Nationals Park on Monday afternoon. “I think it was something that gave me a much better perspective of how to build an organization from the ground up and what goes into creating a winning culture, creating a winning team, creating a winning organization. And I think when this next opportunity came about, I always loved being on the field. I love the competition. I love being with the guys every day. So this is a no-brainer.”

After spending four years managing the lower levels of the Rays’ minor league system – earning his first managing gig at just 25 years old and during which he guided his teams to four straight first-place finishes and back-to-back league championships in 2021 and 2022 – the organization felt he was ready to oversee one of the best minor league systems in all of baseball at just 30 years old.

While most of today’s festivities at Nationals Park were focused on the official introduction of 33-year-old Blake Butera as the Nationals’ new manager, some news on his coaching staff also came out.

Sean Doolittle, the Nats’ former All-Star closer and fan favorite reliever who became a pitching strategist after his playing career on former manager Davey Martinez’s coaching staff, will remain on Butera’s staff, new president of baseball operations Paul Toboni announced in a scrum with the local media after today’s press conference. Doolittle’s exact title has not yet been determined, but Toboni believes that will be made known in the next week or two.

“Sean Doolittle is going to be coming back to the staff, so we're really excited about that,” Toboni said. “Sean, I just really liked getting to know him over the course of the past month, or however long it's been. I think the world of him. And coincidentally, he's got a great relationship with the pitching coach that we hired (Simon Mathews). They're very tight, so it ended up just being a really good relationship, I think, from the get-go, and it actually became an appealing part of Simon signing on here. Those decisions were totally independent of each other, but it turned out to be a really nice thing. So it speaks to Sean and the type of person he is, and how good he is at what he does.”

A product of the University of Virginia, Doolittle came to the Nationals along with fellow reliever Ryan Madson in a July 2017 trade with the Athletics. The left-hander was named an All-Star in 2018, with the All-Star Game taking place at Nationals Park for the first time, and he was one of Martinez’s few trusted high-leverage relievers during their run to a World Series championship in 2019.

Doolittle became a free agent after the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, and after stops in Cincinnati and Seattle, returned to the Nationals in March 2022. But after six appearances, he underwent an internal brace procedure on the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow in July, which ended his season.

Well before he even knew he would be a candidate for the Nationals’ managerial job, let alone get the job, Blake Butera tuned into Paul Toboni’s introductory press conference and found himself captivated by the franchise’s new president of baseball operations.

The 33-year-old with zero major league experience came to an immediate conclusion: “I can work alongside that guy.”

Turns out Toboni also had Butera in his sights, one of several names on a long list of managerial candidates he circled as ones to remember. And that feeling was only bolstered when he got a call out of the blue from Hall of Famer Mike Piazza, who employed Butera on his Team Italy coaching staff at the 2023 World Baseball Classic.

“I have no idea what you’re doing with your search,” Piazza told Toboni, “but there’s this guy that you’ve got to interview.”

Six weeks later, these two previously unknown 30-somethings with an affinity for each other from afar, now sat behind the same dais at Nationals Park, a room packed with reporters, cameras, team executives and family members all watching as they officially began working together as the two people now in charge of this baseball club.

It's been 18 days since news first broke the Nationals were hiring Blake Butera as manager. And at long last, today we will finally get to hear from him about his vision for the job and the path that brought him here.

Butera will be formally introduced during a 1:30 p.m. press conference at Nationals Park – you can watch it live on MASN – with president of baseball operations Paul Toboni also scheduled to speak about the first major decision of his tenure here.

Why did it take 2 1/2 weeks from hiring to press conference? Because Oct. 30 was a big day in the Butera household for reasons that had nothing to do with baseball. On the same day he signed his contract with the Nats, Butera’s wife, Caroline Margolis, gave birth to the couple’s first child: Blair Margaux Butera.

With Butera’s immediate priorities focused on family in Raleigh, N.C., the Nationals decided to wait to hold the press conference until this week. Not that he hasn’t already been busy working out of the home office. Butera has hired three members of his coaching staff so far: bench coach Michael Johns, pitching coach Simon Mathews and catching coordinator Bobby Wilson (whose addition has not officially been announced yet but has been reported).

There should be plenty of opportunities for reporters to ask Butera (and Toboni) questions today. Here are some of the most interesting ones …

We will finally hear from new Nationals manager Blake Butera tomorrow afternoon, with his introductory press conference at Nats Park scheduled for 1:30 p.m. It will air in its entirety on MASN, and be sure to check back on the site and on the MASN Nationals social channels for more coverage.

This has been the most highly anticipated day on the Nats’ offseason calendar since Butera was hired over two weeks ago, the delay in the presser being due to his wife giving birth to the couple’s first child on the day he accepted his first managing job in the major leagues.

Of course, there will be plenty to dissect from what Butera and new president of baseball operations Paul Toboni say tomorrow. But the new leadership duo will have to get straight to work because there are important offseason dates coming up …

* Tuesday, Nov. 18 – Qualifying offer acceptance deadline at 4 p.m.
Toboni and Butera will have all day Monday to celebrate the new skipper’s official introduction. But the very next day, they have to get down to work.

Though this deadline does not directly affect the Nationals, who did not extend the $22.025 million qualifying offer to any players, Toboni and Co. will know after this deadline passes which free agents will cost them a draft pick if they chose to pursue and sign any of them.

The youngest major league manager in five decades is going to have a pitching coach even younger than him. One with a significant D.C. connection and a pedigree in modern baseball philosophy.

The Nationals have hired 30-year-old Simon Mathews as their new pitching coach, luring the up-and-comer from the Reds to work for 33-year-old manager Blake Butera.

Mathews, who first made a name for himself as one of the best pitchers in Georgetown history, spent this past season as Cincinnati’s assistant pitching coach, working underneath the highly regarded Derek Johnson. That’s his lone season on a major league staff, but that actually makes him more experienced than Butera, who has never played, coached nor managed above Single-A.

Mathews worked in the Reds organization for five seasons, the first four in the minors. He began in 2021 by implementing the club’s pitching program at its Dominican academy, then was rehab pitching coordinator in 2022. He served as assistant coordinator of rehabilitation and pitching initiatives from 2023-24, then earned his first promotion to the big leagues in 2025 as assistant pitching coach.

Cincinnati’s pitching staff has lowered its ERA and WHIP each of the last four seasons, from a 4.86 ERA that ranked 28th in the majors in 2022 to a 3.86 ERA that ranked 12th this year, and from a 1.389 WHIP that ranked 26th in 2022 to a 1.222 WHIP that ranked seventh this year. The Reds earned a wild card berth this season behind a pitching staff anchored by three homegrown starters in their 20s (Hunter Greene, Andrew Abbott, Nick Lodolo) who each finished with an ERA under 3.35 and a WHIP under 1.150.

Blake Butera’s right-hand man in the dugout will be a familiar face to the Nationals’ new manager, not to mention one with more experience at the sport’s higher levels.

Butera has selected Michael Johns as his bench coach, the club officially announced Monday evening, tabbing his longtime Rays colleague to work alongside him in D.C.

Johns, 50, has worked in various capacities for the Rays since 2008, including nine seasons as a minor league manager, culminating with an 88-62 record and league finals appearance with Triple-A Durham in 2023. He spent the last two seasons as Tampa Bay’s first base coach, his lone experience in the major leagues.

A former infielder in the Rockies’ farm system in the late ’90s, Johns has since made a name for himself as an instructor for a franchise known for having one of the sport’s best player development pipelines. He served five seasons (2018-22) as Tampa Bay’s minor league field coordinator, tasked with establishing a consistent program for all the organization’s affiliates.

Johns and Butera overlapped nine seasons with the Rays, forming a connection that led to their current reunion with the Nationals. Butera, 33, is 17 years younger than his new bench coach and figures to lean heavily on Johns’ expertise both in establishing pregame routines and in-game decision-making.