You can't blame Rizzo for everything bad then wave away trades that brought back James Wood, Denard Span, Trea Turner, and Wilson Ramos.
Rizzo has been solid in terms of trades. However, he drafts based on physical appearance and tools, which has led to a terrible string of high draft pick pitching busts. Meanwhile, Irvin, Parker, and Herz are all later rounders that did not come in with overpowering fastballs or impressive physical appearance, and have benefitted from Doo's coaching. This is also why he's better at trades than drafts, there's a lot more data to go on when you trade, just as the Nats draft busts' value falls, same goes for other teams when he's talking to them.
But the reason Rizzo is a problem is that his primary job is to be PR cover for Lerner cheapness and dysfunction. He doesn't have a team President to go through like Jim Bowden had to with Kasten, and he wants to keep it that way. To do this role properly, he has to insult our intelligence with garbage spin about salary dumps being "rebuilds" and reminding us that we're not part of "the family", he's not held accountable for bad drafts, bad coaches, etc, in spite of the authority given to him, is super defensive, can't communicate, and hates to share anything but very minimal information. But this is what ownership wants from him. Therefore, as much as I don't like him, he's just a useful idiot for the let's-shag-fly-balls and spend sparingly owner who would only get replaced by another useful idiot.
