After Paul Toboni was hired by the Washington Nationals, the newly minted President of Baseball Operations declared at his introductory press conference that he wanted his baseball team to be the “Envy of [his] sport.” At the time, many felt that was just a young guy talking BS. Toboni has presided over one of the swiftest overhauls the sport has ever seen on his way to trying to achieve that goal. He has turned heads in baseball, a sport steeped in tradition, that is slow to change. The changes take time. Toboni accelerated the clock.
At his introductory presser, Toboni also talked about the “visible scoreboard” is how you should be judged. His team just finished with 77 wins, four from a .500 season. On his Wednesday radio show, he talked about one regret was the bullpen losses and the blown-save record (43). Toboni pondered that if they could have won half of the 24 losses (12), the Nats could have been in the postseason. In the final count, they would have finished with 89 wins — and guess what, that would have tied the Nats for the second Wild Card.
Again, you cannot change the past — only the future. Toboni talked about building the strong foundation then putting in the doors and windows. A great builder’s analogy that is very true in business.
When you inherit a Bottom-10 farm system in what Toboni called the “lifeline” of a team, you have a major part of the team to fix and improve. While hiring Devin Pearson to oversee that part of the organization, they have turned it around within 10 months into a Top-7 system and top 25 percent in the sport. They have showed that coaching and player development matters. How they got there — and how quickly they got there is amazing.
Toboni changed most of the staff with over 50 people let go, and then he brought in much more than 50 people to replace them. He didn’t go to traditional lifers in baseball, and instead went for mostly younger minds, many without any pro baseball experience at all. Names that were not top of mind that began with Blake Butera, a 33 year old, who only had lower-level managerial experience, and he was named manager of the Washington Nationals. This was just one of Toboni’s moves that was criticized for months. At 33, Butera became the youngest MLB manager since the Minnesota Twins hired Frank Quilici in 1972. Quilici inherited a team that only lost 86 games the year before. Butera inherited a 96 loss team.
For the first few months after the hirings, there was lots of talk about their age and lack of experience. Some called the hirings a typical Lerner move to save money. Some were waiting for this to fail. Well it didn’t fail. If anything, this might become the blueprint for teams in the future.
With all the change in the front office and coaching staff, there was little change to the roster, other than the bullpen and the back of the rotation. Curtis Mead, Jorbit Vivas, and Joey Wiemer were the only changes to the position roster. They essentially kept the majority of players from the previous team and did exactly what they promised that they would get an “extra gear” out of each player.
Again, the “extra gear” statement sounded gimmicky and BS. But it absolutely worked. Coaching mattered. The analytics mattered. The technology mattered. This is the blueprint. The key going forward is evolving and improving.
Now we have the final numbers, and it’s impressive when you look at the returning full-time players of which there was seven of them in the lineup. OPS increases for the seven: Dylan Crews (+5.1%), James Wood (+8.0%), CJ Abrams (+11.5%), Jacob Young (+21.3%), Brady House (+23.7%) Luis Garcia Jr. (+24.5%), and Keibert Ruiz (+27.6). Take those numbers, and that is an increase of 17.5 percent in an unweighted average.
In 2025, the Nats were the 20th scoring offense in baseball with 687 runs scored — today, the Nats finished No. 3 in runs scored (821) with virtually the same lineup as last year. The Nats finished ahead of the mighty Los Angeles Dollars Dodgers. Before we take a victory lap, there is work to be done here. The Nats were in the second-half in MLB in RISP hitting (.250) and tied at No. 16. The Top-10 teams in RISP all made the playoffs but two teams. Situational hitting is where the Nats must improve going forward. As a team,
On RISP, the Nats need to increase by 4 percent to get to at least .260 in RISP next year. That might not sound like a lot, but that 4 percent on 1,399 at-bats would have resulted in 56 more hits and kept more innings alive. Assume just 56 more runs, and the Nats would have finished No. 1 in runs scored. Those extra 56 runs would equal 2-wins additionally per the pythagorean formula. Hard to believe just 2-wins — but that is Bill James formula. Pitching runs saved means more than runs scored in Pythagorean.
Staying on the RISP theme, the other bad news is that two of the Nats best RISP hitters are gone: Luis Garcia Jr. hit .330, and Curtis Mead was at .311. The other Nats above .250 were Yohandy Morales in a small sample size was at .400, Andres Chaparro at .341, CJ Abrams at .311 and Jacob Young at .276. That’s it. You now know that six other starters were below the .250 and there is work to do. By taking out Garcia and Mead, that makes the numbers worse.
Now let’s get further into the math. The Nats’ pythagorean per Baseball Reference.com in a W-L is: 82-80 based on this particular +6 run differential. That might say the Nats under-achieved by five wins. Yes, there is the unlucky factor and an historically bad bullpen based on those blown-save losses was the difference.
“I think if we had an average bullpen, I think we’re probably talking about who we’re playing [in the postseason].”
— manager Blake Butera said on Friday
“Whether it’s personnel, whether it’s roles, whatever it might be, we’re going to spend a lot of time on the bullpen this offseason.”
Fix the bullpen to a league average in runs given up, and fix the RISP and now let’s look at the numbers again. The Nats bullpen finished at a 4.99 ERA (editor’s note that bullpen ERA isn’t close to the worst in Nats history). The MLB middle is 4.065. That is 92.5 points of improvement.
Do you know how many runs that is? That would improve the Nats from 405 earned runs in the bullpen to 330. An improvement of 75 runs. It’s like magic. With no changes to the starting rotation and just improving RISP hitting and the bullpen to average, the new pythagorean gets the Nats to 88.85 wins. Round that up to 89. Now if the Nats scored the same exact 821 runs, the pythagorean changes to 86 wins. Then you would have to improve the starting rotation some.
Well, here’s the great news. After the trade deadline, the Nats had the 10th best starting rotation ERA in baseball at 3.91. Shocking, because you didn’t know that. All factual. Do that 3.91 for a full season (706 1/3 innings) and that is 307 starter’s runs, improve the bullpen to league average and that is 330 bullpen runs, and score the same 821 runs, and voila, this team is a playoff team at 91 wins.
Where would 637 earned runs be in baseball this year? That would be 10th in MLB. And everything is about the right amount of balance. Balance is what is needed to build on top of that foundation.
“ … Make sure there are [coaches hired] here that will help players reach their ultimate potential.”
— Toboni said after he was hired
“I think more than anything, we have some young, exciting players. … I’ve told many of them, and I really believe it, I think there’s another gear to tap into with many of them.”
“So many of these [young Nats players] have such great skill sets. Now, it’s up to me to hopefully place the support around them where we can tap into another gear for them. But at the same time, it’s up to them to hold themselves accountable — and hold each other accountable — to reach each of their own potentials.”
Everything had to work seamlessly, and Toboni was hiring personnel at the same time as they began redoing facilities at the West Palm Beach baseball complex and bringing in technology. He was spending millions of his budget on smart people, infrastructure, and technology. They were hard wiring every backstop on each field in West Palm Beach for his new tech. He didn’t get one Trajekt Arc machine — he got three of them. Toboni hired people who understood the technology and how to communicate with the players. The undertaking was enormous. There were reasons to be skeptical at the time, and he pulled it off.
Toboni said he would be working on his autopsy of the season. This one should be easier than last year. Don’t be surprised if he parts ways with some personnel. He also said he expects other teams will be trying to poach some of his people. At the same time, Toboni said he is trying to hire additional staff and especially in his analytics department.
Small steps became big steps during the year. Not everything is perfect, and to the public, they rarely get a glimpse of what is going on behind closed doors. A source told us that it was “controlled chaos” at first then it was smooth sailing as everyone was rowing together. We quoted that before.
It shows first and foremost that the Juan Soto trade probably saved the Nats since that yielded James Wood and CJ Abrams, and also MacKenzie Gore who was traded for top prospects. And still in the wings from that trade is Jarlin Susana who I still believe should be a back of the bullpen stud.
Getting that “extra gear” was the key in all of this. Getting more out of the same players was transformative. This was not the same Wood and Abrams of yesteryear. The old regime did trade for them, and the new regime them from very good players to great players. As Toboni and Butera talked the talk, they walked the walk, and that is so refreshing in a world of over-promise and under-perform.
If you aren’t a player who improved year-over-year, a good chance that you were already released or demoted. Do we need to name those names? Two former first round draft picks were mid-season casualties of not improving. One was drafted by the Nats in 2019 and the other was acquired in the Soto trade and was a Padres first rounder in 2020 (8th overall).
Again, if you weren’t progressing with these coaches, you were probably released. The system was built for improvement. This improvement is why the system is now ranked so high in baseball.
“Beyond that, we’re going to be pretty open-minded,” Toboni said on Friday. “What is involved there, too, is not just like ‘Are we going to go outside and sign players?’ but we have a number of pitchers on our staff that are at inflection points in their career. … We want the process of really developing this offseason to be really dialed in, and I think our guys are bought into that.”
The next phase should be in bringing in pitching through free agency rather than trades that would weaken the farm system. Toboni during the draft added pitchers, and then added more through undrafted free agent signings in July. At the trade deadline, he went hard after relief pitchers and a couple of promising starters like Jack Cebert and Josh Hartle. To build a bullpen, you need arms within your system, and Toboni’s group did that.
The team is better, the system is thriving, and the pitching is the next order of business. Fix the pitching, and this will be a playoff team as we showed you. Hopefully the Nats’ ownership understands that. If extending Cade Cavalli was a sign, that was a welcomed sign. Yesterday during the Nats’ broadcast, Toboni said that everything that he has brought to ownership they agreed to. Everything? Yes, “everything” per Toboni’s words. Their job is to support Toboni with the financial resources to make the next step forward.
We are ready for next steps. Cavalli says the rebuild is over. ❝Process is of a winning culture. … Fully plan on playing in October [2027].❞ When Cavalli says October, that is synonymous with playoffs. Playoffs? Playoffs? Yes, playoffs. ❝We’re walking around here feeling the weather, it feels like playoff baseball weather,❞ Cavalli said. ❝We’re planning on playing in it next year, and I know that every guy feels it and thinks that.❞
The paying fans always deserve better. Winning is the beginning.
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