A Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) is a clear, long-term, and fiercely ambitious target designed to unite an organization and stimulate massive progress. The term was coined by authors Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their 1994 book, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.
While a typical strategic plan looks near-term than to 3-to-5 years ahead, a BHAG usually spans much longer. It feels daunting — carrying a high likelihood of failure — yet everyone in the organization believes it is possible.
When Paul Toboni was officially hired as the President of Baseball Operations of the Washington Nationals nearly a year ago, he set a high bar as he laid out his goals and dreams. A bar so high that it felt years away. His BHAG was building ❝The Envy of [his] Sport.❞ Bold. Concise. Audacious. And to some, they laughed at it.
Tohoni, 35 at that time, had just taken over a failed rebuilding MLB team that had moved backwards in wins, a farm system that was covered in tumbleweeds, and a fanbase that was losing hope.
At that time, the farm system was rated 10th from the bottom in baseball, and the Major League team fell backwards as a 66-win team from a 71-win team a year before that. The front office was a mess with a glut of cronies from the past administration, and most of the coaching staff and player development people should have been fired years before.
The Washington, D.C. team felt as if it was running like the government with the cronyism and bureaucracy with little grasp of fiscal constraints, technology and analytics. Toboni would be the change. In cleaning house, the one mistake you sometimes make is cutting too deep because some good employees lost their jobs. But Toboni felt the need to keep very few people, and was willing to start over, fresh.
The new PoBO spoke of creating a “scouting and player development monster” that would work in the minors and majors by taking the same players and coaching them up to “find another gear.” He talked the talk and has walked the walk.
What sounded like a lot of over-promising — turned out to be one of the swiftest turn-arounds ever seen in any business. It felt like one of those reality shows of Bar Rescue if you ever saw that. Only Toboni seems much more mild-mannered than Jon Taffer.
In a year’s time, Toboni’s farm system went from the Bottom-10 to the Top-7 per Baseball America, and MLB Pipeline has Toboni’s farm ranked 6ᵗʰ in MLB. They also got the top system grade in the NL East with an A.
We had previously quantified how the full-time 2025 MLB offensive returning players have all increased their OPS in 2026. Every one of them, including players who were excelling as stars, where you might only expect small increases, they increased by big numbers, and we are talking about James Wood and CJ Abrams.
In fact last night, Abrams joined the prestigious 30/30 club as the 53rd player in baseball history to accomplish that feat.
And it goes much further than Abrams and Wood. Just remember that BS that ❝It’s never on the coaches.❞ Coaching and smart baseball matters.
This was more than just reinventing Keibert Ruiz to hit. They also were smart about preserving his body by not over-using him like the previous administration did to him and going back further, they did it to Wilson Ramos. What we wrote about as criticisms of the old regime, Toboni seemed to fix each issue, one-by-one.
We have seen progress with pitchers like Cade Cavalli, Andrew Alvarez, and to a lesser extent, Jackson Kent. If you didn’t progress, there was a good chance you weren’t going to stay employed with Toboni. Case and point were former first round draft picks, Jackson Rutledge and Robert Hassell III. Toboni moved on from both. The latter was DFA’d, and he cleared waivers. Instead of retaining Hassell after he cleared waivers — Toboni chose not to and traded him away for undisclosed cash considerations.
Toboni has sent some clear messages and he stressed personal accountability for himself and his employees. Sometimes that message has been tested.
Those aforementioned points are the positives. There are parts of the “scouting and player development monster” that cannot be measured at this point like the scouting.
The scouting used for acquisitions from the draft, trades, waivers claims, Rule-5, etc., need time to fairly evaluate. That has been the mixed bag. You have the Curtis Mead acquisition and the MacKenzie Gore deals on the good side, and possibly Jake Bennett‘s trade on the other. Somewhere in the middle is the trade of Jose A. Ferrer, and the first round draft pick of Chris Hacopian that need more context and time to fairly assess. Even the Bennett trade for Luis Perales needs more time.
Some want to blame Toboni for the failures of the bullpen. But in his defense, he inherited a farm system pipeline of few viable healthy arms that were ready for the task, and an MLB bullpen that just was not good enough. Yes, Toboni traded away Ferrer, the presumptive closer, and did not adequately replace him on the roster. That was a shame.
What Toboni focused on at the trade deadline was trading for several impact bullpen arms and a couple of starting pitchers. On top of that, Toboni drafted some pitchers and signed a bunch of relievers as undrafted free agents. Toboni comes from a system in Boston where they internally built one of the best bullpens in baseball. They have eight losses due to blown saves while the Nats have 23. Toboni knows the task at-hand and won’t let this happen again. That is part of the accountability.
As you go through all of the grading for Toboni, what he and his staff have done in a little less than a year is mind-blowingly good. Even if Toboni did botch a trade or two, sign a couple bad free agents, and under-estimated how bad the bullpen was, he STILL took a 66-win team, with a payroll that was less by 13.8 percent than his predecessor’s team, and Toboni will win many more games than the prior regime by at least 9.1 percent as this team just notched their 72nd win with 8-games remaining in the 2026 season. That win total is the best by a Nats’ team since the 2019 World Series season.
On top of that, Toboni just got his first significant extension done with a star player as he inked Cade Cavalli to a deal with 5-years of team control to take it through the 2031 season and at least get this to a point where Cavalli and Wood at the very least will be on the 2030 roster together.
All of that gives the Nats a nice 4-year window with really everyone but Abrams who is due for free agency after the 2028 season.
The new CBA could have a say in star retention to re-sign a “cornerstone player” (similar to the NBA’s “Bird Rights”). The MLBPA wants players at age-30 to become free agents after 5-years instead of the current 6-years. But for players under 30, that would remain at the current 6-years. The bonus year would be for the 5-year players to keep that player for an extra year by paying a new salary equal to the average of the Top-125 players.
And most expect by that point that this Nats team will have that fertile farm producing top prospects like Seaver King, Eli Willits, and Jarlin Susana to help the big league team in the near-future.
Some are calling yesterday one of the singular best days in Nats history . That might be spot-on as the best day since the World Series win and parade in 2019. None of yesterday happens without Toboni.
Keep this in mind, Toboni has said when criticized that he gets it, and that “the media has a job to do.” And with any job with big goals, it won’t always be perfect. One bad apple shouldn’t spoil the whole bunch. Player acquisition is the toughest part of the job.
You have to be right much more than you’re wrong. At the end of the day, winning consistently is the goal here. There are different paths to winning. You cannot go back and splice together time for any do-overs. You have to be forward-thinking and course-correct. The best can do that.
Toboni’s BHAG will take time. That scouting part of creating a “scouting and player development monster” will take time to fully envision. Key hires like Devin Pearson, Justin Horowitz, and Ani Kilambi will get that done.
Can you sense it? Winning is close.
Leave a Reply