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Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Washington Nationals' unwillingness to adapt, evolve after 2019 World Series led to firings of Mike Rizzo, Davey Martinez
Mike Rizzo didn't wear his 2019 World Series ring on a regular basis. He didn't need to. The shine from that Nationals' championship, the only one in franchise history, followed the now-former general manager everywhere he went. Occasionally, he would slide the 23.2-carat ring on for special occasions — Opening Day, a high-profile press conference — but mostly, Rizzo's reputation carried the day. It was as if 'World Series Champion' trailed his name in invisible ink, the well-deserved accolade unspoken yet omnipresent. Advertisement But the glory of that champagne-soaked October became a double-edged sword. The job security and institutional clout that Rizzo earned in 2019 calcified into a dangerous sense of complacency. In the years since then, baseball evolved. The Nationals didn't. That inflexibility trickled down to manager Davey Martinez, the big-league coaching staff and various other pockets of the organization. As other franchises embraced baseball's technological arms race, Washington stayed relatively stuck in its ways. It's no surprise, then, that in the five-and-a-half seasons since their World Series title, the Nationals have racked up the second-most losses in Major League Baseball. On Sunday, following an embarrassing home sweep defeat to the Boston Red Sox that dropped the Nats to 37-53, change finally arrived. The team, via managing principal owner Mark Lerner, announced that Rizzo and Martinez had been relieved of their duties. The shocking news marks the end of an era. Martinez had skippered the club since 2018. Rizzo was a team employee starting in 2006 and assumed GM responsibilities in 2009. In many ways, the Nationals — who relocated to D.C. just a year before Rizzo's arrival — were built in his image. For years, that was a good thing. Rizzo's eye for talent and aggressiveness in free agency led to a perennial contender. But as the game changed and Rizzo didn't, things devolved. Advertisement As the team embarked on a rebuild, key pieces from the 2019 team departed via free agency. Others, such as Max Scherzer, Trea Turner and Juan Soto, were dealt away in blockbusters for a haul of prospects. Some of those young players, including James Wood, CJ Abrams and MacKenzie Gore (all of whom came via the Soto deal), have become difference-makers and franchise cornerstones. But in the main, Rizzo failed to replenish his farm system via the draft and international market. In fact, over the past 13 years, no team has been less successful than the Nats at drafting and developing homegrown talent. Rizzo is considered a great evaluator of talent, but the on-field results, or lack thereof, speak for themselves. That the Nationals are here, mired in the muck, stuck in this aimless hamster wheel of a rebuild, is not solely Rizzo's fault. The team's dysfunctional ownership group, the Lerner family, also deserves a large share of the blame. Since Mark Lerner assumed control from his father, Ted, the beloved self-made patriarch, in 2018, the family's stewardship of the club has grown increasingly disjointed, distant and indecisive. That was best evidenced in April 2022, when the Lerners put their franchise on the market, only for the sale process to quietly fizzle out over the ensuing year and a half. All the while, the family grew less willing to invest in the club than they were during the 2010s, something that frustrated Rizzo, who felt handcuffed by what he saw as an insufficient budget. The Lerners, on the other hand, surely wanted to see the fruits of Rizzo's rebuild before committing big money to free agents. Advertisement In the end, the family's lack of oversight, it seems, let Rizzo's reign deteriorate, unmonitored, past its expiration date. Meanwhile, in the dugout, Martinez struck an even more obstinate figure. His traditionalism worked wonders with the veteran 2019 team, but it failed to translate once Washington's roster became younger and less experienced. After star shortstop CJ Abrams admired a homer at Yankee Stadium in August 2023, Martinez pulled him aside in the dugout and told the youngster to tone down the showboating. The moment felt somewhat symbolic, an old-school skipper clinging too tightly to a bygone era, trying and failing, in an overtly public setting, to instill a sense of stuffy decorum in a game that has long since embraced individuality. Advertisement Earlier this season, Martinez entangled himself in a self-inflicted kerfuffle that might become the lasting image of his downfall. When the skipper was asked how much responsibility for his team's struggles lay with the coaching staff, Martinez was unapologetic, choosing to strike an adversarial tone. 'It's never on coaching,' he said. 'Coaches work their asses off every single day. We're not going to finger-point here and say it's coaches. It's never on the coaches.' The implication — that his underlings were infallible and the failures rested entirely with the players — ruffled feathers inside a clubhouse already frustrated with the lack of actionable insight available at the big-league level. Despite a disastrous 71-91 2024 season, no changes were made over the offseason to a staff that, in some areas, was considered outdated and unqualified to succeed in the modern game. In some instances, according to multiple sources, players began to intentionally tune out instruction from certain coaches altogether. On Monday, bench coach Miguel Cairo was named interim manager in Martinez's place. Whether the Nats will make any other changes to their big-league staff was unclear as of Monday afternoon. Advertisement The timing of this news caught many in the baseball world off-guard. It's a particularly busy stretch of the MLB calendar. Rizzo was fired exactly one week before this year's MLB Draft, in which Washington holds the No. 1 pick. That decision, the most consequential one this organization has had to make since the Juan Soto trade, is made all the more interesting by the lack of a consensus top prospect. On Sunday, the team announced that Mike DeBartolo, the senior vice president and assistant general manager of baseball operations, is now the interim GM. That means DeBartolo will oversee the upcoming draft, alongside vice president of amateur scouting Danny Haas and senior director of amateur scouting Brad Ciolek, both of whom have been with the Nats only since the fall of 2023. Advertisement How Rizzo's sudden departure will impact the team's draft strategy is — and might always be — unclear. But if ownership no longer felt confident in his ability to lead, firing him before such a crucial, franchise-defining draft makes some sense. It is, at least, better than canning him after he sketches a new blueprint for the organization's future. That future is now in the hands of the Lerner family and, to a lesser extent, DeBartolo. He is a relative unknown, but people around the game describe him as a perfectly qualified, analytically inclined, modern baseball exec. The job in front of him — or whoever is tasked with refurbishing the Nats — is daunting. Whether he will be entrusted with the reins full-time remains to be seen. In time, Rizzo and Martinez will likely be remembered as franchise icons, the characters who brought a World Series to D.C. for the first time since 1924. They deserve credit for all the good — the dogpiles, the celebrations, the parade, the flags that fly forever, the ring on Rizzo's finger. But for the Nationals to return to that stage, change was not just inevitable. It was necessary.
Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Mike Rizzo Breaks Silence On Getting Fired Sunday Night
Mike Rizzo Breaks Silence On Getting Fired Sunday Night originally appeared on The Spun. Mike Rizzo, the GM of the Washington Nationals, got fired on Sunday evening. The Nationals, three-plus years into their rebuild following the Juan Soto trade - and, really, the rebuild started one year before that, in 2021, when Max Scherzer and Trea Turner were fired - are one of the worst teams in baseball. Advertisement Washington, which won a World Series in 2019, has the second-worst record in all of baseball - ahead of just Colorado - since then. The Nats are coming off of a weekend sweep by the Boston Red Sox. Sunday night, the Nationals announced that both Rizzo and his manager, Dave Martinez, have been fired. 'On behalf of our family and the Washington Nationals organization, I first and foremost want to thank Mike and Davey for their contributions to our franchise and our city,' team owner Mark D. Lerner said. 'Our family is eternally grateful for their years of dedication to the organization, including their roles in bringing a World Series trophy to Washington, D.C. While we are appreciative of their past successes, the on-field performance has not been where we or our fans expect it to be. This is a pivotal time for our Club, and we believe a fresh approach and new energy is the best course of action for our team moving forward." WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 23: Max Scherzer #31 of the Washington Nationals throws a pitch against the New York Yankees during the first inning in the game at Nationals Park on July 23, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by) Sunday night, Rizzo, one of the longest tenured executives in all of baseball, broke his silence on the firing. Advertisement 'The sun will come up tomorrow,' Rizzo said in a text message to The Washington Post's Barry Svrluga. 'That's the job. I had a great run. Navigated that ownership group for almost 20 years.' Senior vice president and assistant general manager Mike DeBartolo has been named the team's interim GM. The team has yet to announce who will be serving as the team's interim manager, though an announcement is expected Monday. Mike Rizzo Breaks Silence On Getting Fired Sunday Night first appeared on The Spun on Jul 6, 2025 This story was originally reported by The Spun on Jul 6, 2025, where it first appeared.
New York Times
07-07-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Firing Mike Rizzo and Dave Martinez makes some sense for the Nationals, but the timing doesn't
Indifferent. Apathetic. Disconnected. All of those words seemed to apply in recent seasons to the Washington Nationals ownership group headed by Mark Lerner. Well, wonder of wonders, ownership just snapped out of it, at just about the oddest time imaginable – one week before the Nats will make the No. 1 pick in baseball's amateur draft, and less than a month before the trade deadline. Advertisement The timing of the Nationals' dismissals of president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo and manager Davey Martinez on Sunday was so sudden, ownership did not even appear fully prepared. Lerner named a successor for Rizzo, assistant GM Mike DeBartolo, but held off announcing Martinez's replacement until Monday. Bench coach Miguel Cairo and Triple-A manager Matthew LeCroy would appear the most logical candidates. If Lerner and Co. were desperate to draw attention away from themselves, a theory advanced by one former team executive, they sure had an odd way of going about it. Not that Rizzo, the game's second-longest tenured head of baseball operations, and Martinez, the manager who led the franchise to its only World Series title in 2019, necessarily deserved to keep their jobs. The Nationals' 37-53 record is the fourth-worst in the majors. More telling, the Nats since 2019 rank second in the majors in losses, ahead of only the Colorado Rockies. True, ownership needed to decide this month on 2026 options for both Rizzo and Martinez. But general managers almost never get fired before the deadline. The last time it happened, as far as I can tell, was when the Minnesota Twins dumped Terry Ryan on July 18, 2016. Ryan, at least, got to oversee the Twins' draft that year. In 2021, the draft moved from June to July. So in dumping Rizzo, the Nationals are leaving both the draft and deadline to DeBartolo, the new interim GM. The No. 1 pick, as the Nationals know well from their selections of Stephen Strasburg in 2009 and Bryce Harper in 2010, is a monumental opportunity for any franchise. By now, the draft boards of most teams are in relative order. But picking first isn't always about simply choosing the best fit for an organization. Teams sometimes operate strategically, taking a player they can sign for less in order to spread their bonus pool money to other talents in later rounds. That strategy might make particular sense this year, with no clear No. 1 pick emerging. Advertisement The deadline, for the Nats, is perhaps less meaningful – they do not figure to be terribly active. Among their players on expiring contracts, reliever Kyle Finnegan is perhaps their most attractive chip. Right-hander Mike Soroka just went on the injured list with a strained right biceps. Infielders Amed Rosario and Paul DeJong, if moved, wouldn't figure to bring back much. Rizzo, of course, made one of the best deadline trades in recent memory in 2022, acquiring two players who were named National League All-Stars on Sunday, left-hander MacKenzie Gore and left fielder James Wood, as well as a third who was a strong candidate to make the team, shortstop CJ Abrams. That deal, as I wrote on May 27, could mask only so much. The Nationals' failures in player development, as well as in amateur and international scouting, go back more than a decade. Rizzo made changes to scouting and player development at the end of 2023. But they might have been too little, too late. Lerner, in announcing the moves Sunday, resorted to standard ownership speak, citing a need for a 'fresh approach and new energy.' Which, in a vacuum, is not an unfair analysis. But ownership previously extended Rizzo on several occasions, in part because they could not seem to imagine anyone else leading the organization. If anything, the dismissal of Martinez was more surprising. As The Athletic's Britt Ghiroli wrote last month, Martinez was well-liked by ownership. He signed his last contract before Rizzo agreed to his. Perhaps ownership decided it had enough of Rizzo's strong personality. And perhaps Martinez's comments after a loss to the Miami Marlins on June 14 marked a turning point in how ownership viewed him. 'We're not going to finger point here and say it's on the coaches. It's never on the coaches. Sometimes you've got to put the onus on the players, they've got to go out there and they've got to play the game.' Advertisement Martinez later backtracked, saying of his players, 'It wasn't on them. My comments (were) nothing about them. They know that.' But it's never a good look when a manager blames his players. Lerner's statement, naturally, made no mention of ownership's own culpability. The Nationals had a top-10 payroll seven of eight seasons between 2014 and '21. In the past three years, however, they've averaged in the bottom 10. And Rizzo seemed to take a shot at Lerner and Co. on the way out, telling Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post that he 'navigated that ownership group for almost 20 years.' The fallout from all this is coming soon, first with the draft, then at the deadline. If ownership allows, perhaps DeBartolo will take an aggressive approach with trades, entertaining offers on players who are under club control beyond this season. The boldest thing he could do would be to listen on Gore, who is at the same level of service Soto was when the Nats traded him in 2022. An extension for Gore is unlikely. Like Soto, he is represented by Scott Boras, who generally prefers his clients to establish their values on the open market. For a pitcher of Gore's quality, one who is available for three pennant races, the Nationals perhaps could acquire three or four building blocks. Of course, such a move would require the type of vision Nationals ownership rarely shows. Firing a losing head of president of baseball operations is defensible as long as ownership has a plan. When ownership makes such a move just before two of the biggest transactional days on the baseball calendar, it's fair to question what that plan might be. (Top photo of Martinez, Rizzo and Lerner in 2022: Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Reuters
07-07-2025
- Sport
- Reuters
Nationals fire manager Dave Martinez, GM Mike Rizzo
July 7 - The Washington Nationals dismissed manager Dave Martinez and general manager Mike Rizzo on Sunday, more than five years after they guided the franchise to its only World Series title. Martinez, who helped Washington win the 2019 World Series in his second year on the job, nonetheless has a lopsided 500-622 record through 7 1/2 seasons as manager. Following their sweep at the hands of the Boston Red Sox that concluded Sunday, the Nationals are 37-53, last place in the National League East and 16 games out of first. They have the second-worst record in Major League Baseball since the start of the 2020 season at 325-473. Only the Colorado Rockies have been worse. In a statement, Nationals managing principal owner Mark D. Lerner said Mike DeBartolo will serve as interim general manager, while a decision about the interim manager will be made Monday. DeBartolo was Washington's senior vice president and assistant GM of baseball operations. "On behalf of our family and the Washington Nationals organization, I first and foremost want to thank Mike and Davey for their contributions to our franchise and our city," Lerner said in his statement. "Our family is eternally grateful for their years of dedication to the organization, including their roles in bringing a World Series trophy to Washington, D.C. While we are appreciative of their past successes, the on-field performance has not been where we or our fans expect it to be. "This is a pivotal time for our club, and we believe a fresh approach and new energy is the best course of action for our team moving forward." Martinez, 60, was a longtime MLB player and coach who won a World Series as the Chicago Cubs' bench coach before Washington gave him his first managerial job. Rizzo, 64, had been with the Nationals since 2007, when he was hired as their assistant general manager. He was promoted to GM in 2009 and given the additional title of president of baseball operations in 2013. --Field Level Media
The Guardian
07-07-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Nationals fire manager Dave Martinez, GM Mike Rizzo amid another losing season
Manager Dave Martinez and general manager Mike Rizzo were fired by the Washington Nationals on Sunday, more than halfway through their sixth consecutive losing season since winning the 2019 World Series. The move came after the Nationals were swept by the Boston Red Sox. They are 37-53, and the only other National League club with a worse record is the Colorado Rockies. 'Our family is eternally grateful for their years of dedication to the organization, including their roles in bringing a World Series trophy to Washington,' owner Mark Lerner said in a statement. 'While we are appreciative of their past successes, the on-field performance has not been where we or our fans expect it to be. This is a pivotal time for our club, and we believe a fresh approach and new energy is the best course of action for our team moving forward.' Rizzo's time running the Nationals is over after more than a decade and a half. One of the Lerners' first hires when they assumed control of the organization, Rizzo had been GM since 2009 and had president of baseball operations added to his title in 2013. 'He played an instrumental role in leading the transformation of our farm system and building a roster that reached an unprecedented level of organizational success,' Lerner said. 'Mike helped make us who we are as an organization, and we're so thankful to him for his hard work and dedication.' Senior VP and assistant GM Mike DeBartolo is taking over for Rizzo on an interim basis. Washington has the No 1 pick in the upcoming draft. 'Mike DeBartolo is a smart and thoughtful executive, and we're fortunate to have him as part of our organization,' Lerner said. 'We are confident in his ability to lead the baseball operations staff through these next, important months.' Martinez became the fourth manager fired since the start of the season after Pittsburgh's Derek Shelton, Colorado's Bud Black and Baltimore's Brandon Hyde. It was not immediately clear who would succeed Martinez, who last month bristled at a question about how to spread the blame among players and coaches. 'It's never on coaching,' Martinez said in June. 'Never on coaching. Coaches work their (butts) off every single day. We're not going to finger point here and say it's coaches. It's never on the coaches. They work hard. The message is clear. All the work is done prior. So, sometimes, they have to go out there and play the game. It's always been about the players. Always.' Martinez had never been a manager at any level when Rizzo hired him to replace Dusty Baker before the 2018 season. The Nationals went 82-80 in Martinez's first season and got off to a 19-31 start the following year, leading to some calls for him to be replaced. But Rizzo stuck with Martinez, and that decision paid off in a big way: Led by starting pitchers Stephen Strasburg, who earned World Series MVP honors, and Max Scherzer, rookie outfielder Juan Soto, young shortstop Trea Turner and a string of veterans — including Howie Kendrick, Ryan Zimmerman and Anthony Rendon — the Nationals won the franchise's first title. They took a step back in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, and then Rizzo began tearing apart the roster, making a series of trades that sent Scherzer, Soto, Turner and others elsewhere. The reconstruction has continued, without much in the way of concrete progress in the standings to show for it, although the team does have some building blocks that show promise, including starter MacKenzie Gore, shortstop CJ Abrams and outfielders James Wood and Dylan Crews. Gore and Wood are NL All-Stars. 'Nationals fans have a lot to be optimistic about, and we see these changes as a difficult, but necessary move in a positive direction,' Lerner said. 'As has been the case since my late father took control of the team almost 20 years ago, our family remains committed to winning.' Washington finished fourth or fifth in the NL East every year from 2020 through 2024, never putting together a higher winning percentage than the .438 (71-91) each of the last two seasons. The team is again in last place. Martinez's full record with the Nationals was 500-622. 'I've always appreciated and admired Davey's passion for the game of baseball and the love he has for his players,' Lerner said. 'Davey's ability to connect with our staff, our players, our fans and our community set him apart. While this chapter has come to an end, we know that it doesn't close the book on what should continue to be a long and successful career in baseball.'
