When the best laid plans of the 2022 rebuild failed, it led to an organizational turnover from the President of Baseball Operations down to the changes at the entry level in the minor leagues. In came Paul Toboni as the new PoBO with a fresh perspective on building this team through a revamped player development monster and a vow that he wants this team to be the “envy of all sports.”
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— Paul Toboni said on his arrival
I said that my goal is to make the Nationals the envy of sport.
To me, that means an organization defined by our relentless pursuit of excellence, strengthened by our connection to each other and fueled by our positive energy. As a result, we become an organization that players and staff are itching to join because they know it’s where they will develop and thrive most; a place that energizes our loyal fans and attracts new ones, and where success is achieved – and sustained – over time.
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Wouldn’t that be great to be the envy of sport? Sustained winning at the highest level can get you trophies to hoist, but don’t you also need to be an organization that has the respect of others? Getting there seems achievable in theory. Only a select few have reached that level. Staying there for long is difficult. The Dodgers are buying championships. Are they the envy of sport? Are they a model to try to replicate? Not if there is a hard salary cap coming. What is Toboni’s overall plan to get there? Certainly start from the bottom up as he wants to build a development monster.
There was a time when Ryan Zimmerman didn’t say much as a player in public. Sure, he would do the interviews when asked, and often he would toe the company line with niceties, baseball clichés, and jargon. That is how you stay out of trouble by saying the right words. He is still an employee of the Washington Nationals so he has never spoken outside of the lines in public. But in this new Toboni era, where you can speak your mind more than years past — Zimmerman opened up on his 11th Inning Podcast with Toboni.
For a few years, Nats fans have wanted that big 6-or-7 year deal for a big free agent to be this team’s Jayson Werth. On his podcast, Zimmerman tempered his thoughts to getting a veteran team leader on a 2-to-4 year deal, and Zim said, “I’m not saying to go crazy to get the top of the list [free agent] — that would be cool too.”
Listen to this 2½ minutes with Zim and T-Bone talking like two friends. It seemed like Toboni was on the same page with Zimmerman that “it’s unfair” to ask Dylan Crews and James Wood to be your team leaders, and you needed to find your Alex Bregman like Toboni’s 2025 Red Sox did at the time. Well, Toboni’s manager, Blake Butera, named Wood as a potential leader a couple of weeks ago. It’s as if that October conversation with Zim didn’t exist.
Sure, signing veteran leaders usually costs a lot of money. So here’s the thing — a source of ours has said several times that Toboni did not spend anywhere close to his entire budget. That might be hard for some to believe. Most just assume that ownership didn’t give Toboni enough money to spend. Last year, that same source nailed it when we reported that former GM, Mike Rizzo, had $50 million to spend. Sure enough, Rizzo spent a little over $50 million.
While Bregman was a wish and a dream to be signed by the Nats after he opted-out of his Red Sox contract, there were other players who would have fit the leader’s role for much smaller dollars — and it never happened unless you consider Miles Mikolas to be that guy. Of course Butera named Mikolas as one of the possible leaders in an interview with the Sports Junkies on 106.7 The Fan. But Mikolas is signed for just 1-year, and he should be gone by the trade deadline if he pitches well!
So Butera’s interview on the Sports Junkies radio show, he said it will be leadership from within and names Wood and CJ Abrams. But Zimmerman was clear that you shouldn’t be asking your young players to take on those roles. Butera comes from the Tampa system where they did have young leaders from within. So maybe that was a Tampa Bay thing, but Zim was once in that position as a young player on teams that never got close to a winning season until Werth arrived before 2011.
You don’t want to force leadership. It should come naturally, and be embraced. Zim was part of that Nats’ 2008 team where they brought in a bunch of veterans on 1-year deals. Players who were 35+ year old like Aaron Boone and Paul LoDuca. While you knew their careers were just about over, they were short-timers. That was a terrible team, and Boone and LoDuca didn’t help.
It seemed the Lerner ownership group learned from the 2008 disaster, and they authorized former GM, Jim Bowden, to make an offer of over $180 million to free agent Mark Teixeira who chose the Yankees for less money.
Bowden said his team’s owners “demonstrated their commitment to win, when they stepped up in negotiations … at the highest level.”
— Bowden wrote in an email to the AP at the time
“We are disappointed we weren’t able to sign him, and will now turn our attention to several other opportunities to improve our major league club this offseason.”
Some called it BS that the offer wasn’t real to Teixeira, but years later, Bowden spoke on his radio show and said the offer was 100 percent legitimate and he thought the Nats were going to get him. In 2009, the Nats signed Adam Dunn as their veteran team leader on a 2-year deal. Then everything changed when the team signed Werth to a 7-year deal for nearly $130 million.
The Nats probably dodged a bullet on not acquiring Teixeira. The Werth deal was one that fans either loved him or didn’t. But he was the change the clubhouse needed to win. And Werth embraced that role, and won every year while he was on the team after the 2011 season. That was six consecutive years of winning that included three NL East crowns.
We will have to see if the clubhouse comes together and wins together because the opposite won’t be pretty. All of my personal optimism from Zimmerman’s talk with Toboni seemed like the Nats were going to go in a direction to get a team leader — and maybe they tried and had a Teixeira situation where the money was rejected. The thing is that nothing has leaked if that indeed did happen — and nobody has asked Toboni if there was a big fish he was trying to land and couldn’t reel him in. So we shouldn’t assume — but here we are with less veteran leadership than the team had last year.
Time will tell on this of course.
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