Rizzo and Davey Canned

[OfftheBat]

Assuming Rizzo wants to stay in baseball. Hes 64 and has a 2 year old. He might decide that he needs a break.

Wow that's kind of an interesting age at being a dad lol

[para]

Better him the me. LOL At least he isn't 72 with a 24 year old g/f like Belichick with a 24 year old g/f. I'm sure conversations between the two are fascinating

[IanRubbish]

Remember that Manny freaking Acta somehow got hired again to manage a team.  He may not have made the dumb comments Davey made, but he also never came close to sniffing the playoffs and was so obviously a complete dipcrap.

Yes, dipcrap is a perfect way to describe Mannequin Acta, and his awful Successories poster comments post game.  "If you have an attitude of gratitude".  Loved when he said Zim had no idea about coaching, as if Acta did.  Ultimate Lerner budget hire.  When Cleveland hired him, I thought they were on crack, and his record there pretty much confirmed that they were.

But while the Lerners remained clueless, things turned around when that fool Riggleman quit, and they finally brought in a real manager.  Service time clocks are ticking much more loudly this time around, but this is a great day in Nats history.

[IanRubbish]

Better him the me. LOL At least he isn't 72 with a 24 year old g/f like Belichick with a 24 year old g/f. I'm sure conversations between the two are fascinating

Rizzo has neither the wealth, nor the accomplishments, to be a sugar daddy like Belichick. 

[English Natsie]

Assuming baseball is no different to any other sport, then we'll see the false dawn of the 'New Coach Bounce' - a temporary change brought about by the nature of change, itself, and a desire to impress the new coach. Reality soon re-asserts itself, however, so there's a return to the norm. Might as well go for ground-zero, now, and get what we can for Abrams, Gore and Wood, then start again (again...)...

Hoist the Jolly W!...

[English Natsie]

Anyway, DM can now practice what he preaches - 'bumpy roads lead to beautiful places...'   

[ChiliPalmer14]

Franny also needs to go.

I missed much of today's game, but can't take him anymore.  Listened to the NESN feed for the last two innings and Lou Merloni sounded like Vin Scully compared to Franny.  The Lerners love their propaganda pushers, but if they want to show just an iota of goodwill to fans, Franny has to go when the new broadcast channel is setup after the MASN deal ends.

I like Franny.  Avila, Morse and these other shlubs they've brought in are so dry and boring it was like watching a game full of Keibert Ruiz at bats.  Franny has energy and humor to go along with the knowledge of having been a player.  FP kinda did, too. 

[nobleisthyname]

Also no one cares what he thinks.  He was an inept GM for the Nats, not like there's some Bronx or Fenway intrigue that will attract listeners.  And even then, don't see a lot of people reaching out to former Sawx GM Chaim Bloom for his view on things.

Not sure if you just meant no media appearances, but Chaim Bloom is taking over as the Cardinals POBO next season so he's definitely still around.

[PowerBoater69]

By my calculation, the Nats are 18th in MLB in spending since 2020, the Lerners need to step back up but that's not that far off the median. Meanwhile the Nats are 29th in wins over that time, they aren't paying much and they sure haven't been getting what they've paid for.

[bluestreak]

By my calculation, the Nats are 18th in MLB in spending since 2020, the Lerners need to step back up but that's not that far off the median. Meanwhile the Nats are 29th in wins over that time, they aren't paying much and they sure haven't been getting what they've paid for.

How much of that is tied up in Strasburg?

[PowerBoater69]

How much of that is tied up in Strasburg?

A whole heaping lot of it. They were willing to spend big but they spent dumb.

[nobleisthyname]

Zuckerman on Nats Chat this morning was saying that Davey and Rizzo were among the highest paid at their respective positions mostly as a result of their long tenures.

If that's true it's entirely possible the Lerners can cheap out on hiring their replacements and still end up with something better.

[sixthree175]

freak them...they didn't win crap...the players won in 2019 in spite of them...

This should have happened around Memorial Day.
BTW -- Why all of a sudden is filthy language back in business on The Clubhouse threads?

[bluestreak]

Svrluga: https://wapo.st/4eBvwzn (gift article)

This was a good article. He gives Davey and Rizzo their due, but also goes into why they had become too comfortable and probably needed to go. Good Balance.

The most telling part of the piece was this:

  No significant decision has been made by Nationals ownership since the death of Ted Lerner, the self-made family patriarch who was the Lerners’ guiding light. Ted Lerner died in February 2023. Even before that, his son, Mark, had served as the club’s point person. But the reality is that decisions were made by a group — Ted Lerner’s sons-in-law, Edward Cohen and Robert Tanenbaum, as well as his daughters, Debra Cohen and Marla Tanenbaum. A third generation — Ted’s grandkids — is sometimes involved. There’s a herding-cats element to it all, and it can make it hard to find consensus, with an individual decision as well as an overall direction.

So the team is being run by a committee of nepo babies? Now everything makes sense. And as long as this remains the case, it doesn’t matter who the GM is.

[Slateman]

A whole heaping lot of it. They were willing to spend big but they spent dumb.

They spent a lot under Ted. Not so much this ownership group.

[PowerBoater69]

This was a good article. He gives Davey and Rizzo their due, but also goes into why they had become too comfortable and probably needed to go. Good Balance.

The most telling part of the piece was this:

So the team is being run by a committee of nepo babies? Now everything makes sense. And as long as this remains the case, it doesn’t matter who the GM is.

Maybe the Lerner kids will start suing each other like the Angelos kids. My real hope is that there is some pride left somewhere in that family and they are going to want to show that they can win without Rizzo and Davey.

[nobleisthyname]

So the team is being run by a committee of nepo babies? Now everything makes sense. And as long as this remains the case, it doesn’t matter who the GM is.

Yup. Not doing much to make someone think better about their class of people.

[bluestreak]

This should have happened around Memorial Day.
BTW -- Why all of a sudden is filthy language back in business on The Clubhouse threads?

Good point. I made some edits and changed the thread title.  Let’s watch the Language in the Clubhouse at least.

[varoadking]

Might as well go for ground-zero, now, and get what we can for Abrams, Gore and Wood, then start again (again...)...

Innit...

[Smithian]

This is an odd thread to read as the board's most aggressive sunshine pumper since the too soon passing of Sunshine Squad patron saint Baseball is Life.

I was never on the "Fire Davey!" train before the end of June. He won a Championship. He showed he wouldn't hold talent back. There is value there. But since 2021, the Nationals have been the worst in the majors in both baserunning and defensive, judging by fWAR in both categories. Eye test backs it up. Plenty of small market teams in the top 10 of both. This team has been abysmal at the little things. I used to say, "He hold a clubhouse together!" but this season the team has had multiple stretches where it seemed they didn't care. To be 28-30 then crash out for all of June is inexcuable. Yet another lost season.

Then on to RIzzo. Our guy Rizzo. Someone I thought should have been canned in 2022 for a fresh start, and I relented, again, until end of June. He built this crap sandwhich. The 2010's were awesome. I have hundreds of posts from the dark days defending his moves up to and through the 2010's.

But end of the day, 2020 was going to be bad. Go look at the offseason moves pre-COVID. 2021 showed some spunk but it wasn't like a Schwarber injury derailed a championship contender. It needed to be blown up. The problem was Rizzo oversaw a minor league system that decayed into the worst in the major leagues. Even after the 2021 firesale, it was still bottom third. Draft picks abysmal, Latin American returns cratering. Mike RIzzo gets all his flowers for the Juan Soto trade, but we are headed to a sixth straight lost season and we missed a chance this year to be competitive, even .500, with this young core. And for all the budget restraints, he handed out $30+ million in new AAV of contracts last offseason and it's been a cumulative disaster.

Other than the Soto trade for Rizzo, nothing over the past half decade has made me think Martinez and Rizzo are irreplaceable. And I am missing what makes them irreplaceable in some eyes other than some tribal fear that being critical of Rizzo and Martinez is some defense of Lerner instead of a mounting case of this team rotting on their watch.

I'm fine with new leadership and fresh faces. It was stale. It was time.

[IanRubbish]

Nats have a 4.3 WAR from drafted players since 2012, dead last in MLB.

[Slateman]

So the team is being run by a committee of nepo babies? Now everything makes sense. And as long as this remains the case, it doesn’t matter who the GM is.

I thought everyone knew this already. All this group has wanted to do is sell this franchise for a boatload of cash and use it to bail out their floundering real estate empire

[blue911]

Rizzo got fired for buying the batting machine, Davey for wanting it.

[blue911]

My money is on Miguel Cairo being the next permanent manager

[imref]

My money is on Miguel Cairo being the next permanent manager

Morosi says they are likely to promote from within with Cairo and LeCroy being the most likely options for the interim slot.