Rizzo was the Correct Choice
August 20, 2009 at 1:55 pm by Capitol Avenue Club under Defense, Front Office, Washington Nationals
If your interim GM did the following, you’d be pretty pleased with him and want him to assume your team’s permanent GM position. Here goes:
- Locked up your team star for 5 years at below-market value. One that hits for power, plays excellent defense, gets on base, and plays a premium position–3B.
- Drafted the best available player in the draft and signed him for less money than most people thought he’d get.
- Focused on youth in the rotation, developing very interesting, young pitchers during a meaningless season. If you’re going to lose, do it with the kids. Do it with someone who will actually learn something. Someone whose interesting. Someone who you have a future with. I do this rant all the time, but it gets ignored regularly by certain GMs. Go figure.
- Improved the team’s defense and figures to keep doing so. First of all, the Nyjer Morgan acquisition really shored up the CF defense. Your outfield is never dysfunctional if you have an elite center fielder. Secondly, trading away Nick Johnson (for a very interesting prospect) and moving Dunn to 1B and moving Willingham to LF for good is a huge upgrade defensively. Going with Dukes, Morgan, and Willingham right-to-left as opposed to Willingham, Dukes/Milledge, and Dunn is worth nearly 9 wins a season in the outfield.
- Got all of the questionable personalities. I’m looking at you, Lastings Milledge. Julian Tavarez.
- Has confidence in the team. And I quote:
“We are in the building process,” Rizzo said. “We are not rebuilding. This is a team that is, in my opinion, not far away from being a good, solid baseball team. …
“I understand we’ve got holes to fill, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us this season, this offseason and through spring training. But I feel like we’re prepared for it, we’re going to get it right, and I do not believe that this needs total rebuilding.”
Rizzo is right. They’ve got this team going in absolutely the correct direction. This team was so bad, so hopeless for most of this decade. They’re finally committed to doing it right. Building from within.
I’ve pointed this out before, but the Nationals have used 10 starting pitchers this season. Look at their ages:
Shairon Martis, 22.
Jordan Zimmermann, 23.
Ross Detwiler, 23.
Collin Balester, 23.
John Lannan, 24.
Scott Olsen, 25.
Craig Stammen, 25.
Garrett Mock, 26.
J. D. Martin, 26.
Daniel Cabrera, 28.
Nine of them haven’t reached their peak years and the 10th, Daniel Cabrera, who arguably had reached his peak years and was brought in as a no-risk exercise, someone they took a flyer on, got released when Rizzo, delivering the quote of the year in the process, realized Cabrera wasn’t going to pan out. The quote:
I was tired of watching him.
Just priceless. So even if he’s a bust you’ll be entertained. And Jim Bowden was your last GM, not like the expectations are high, right?
Back to seriousness.
I pointed out earlier that his draft was a huge success. Especially the 1st round. Just look at how the 2009 Nationals draft went and how the 2008 Nationals draft went. The 2008 one was a complete disgrace. The 2009 one may have been the best of the year.
I think, without a doubt, Mike Rizzo is the best choice for the job. He has been a god-send for that franchise. It’s like John Schuerholz was for the Braves. Actually, some of his moves strongly resemble what Schuerholz did in 1991. Shoring up the defense, going with a young, talented pitching staff, etc.
They still have a ways to go. They need a real defensive SS, a 2B, and a catcher (Ryan Doumit???). They also need to shore up the bullpen, a lot of which can be accomplished through the young rotation depth they’ve built up and developed. They’ll look to add a closer this off-season, I imagine. They’ll also look to bring in a veteran sort of player-coach for the rotation. Mentoring that talented young staff they’ve got (Randy Johnson???). But apart from that, they’ve got the makings of a winning team. I really believe they do. Five smaller acquisitions (or maybe they have answers stashed away in the minors, I don’t know, I don’t know their system at all) and I think they’re a playoff team. When’s the last time that the Nationals, or the Expos for that matter, were 5 small acquisitions away from being a playoff team? It’s phenomenal how close this team, who was so bad for so long, is to being very good.
Rizzo acknowledges this, as the quote read earlier. But he’s confident. As he should be.
Rizzo’s done an unbelievable job as interim GM and he is, without a doubt, the correct choice to be Washington’s permenant GM.
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Couldn’t agree more. For some reason ESPN was announcing it last night as “Nationals name Diamondback Official new GM.” While technically true…well….partially true in that he’s an Ex-DBack Exec., seemed like a strange way of making the announcement. Rizzo’s head appears to be on straight and he’s definitely got an ability to get things done. I hope this is the beginning of the turnaround for that franchise, though, I don’t want them getting too good.
Some shithead at ESPN thought a current D-Backs exec would assume the GM job and Rizzo would be fired. Which would be beyond idiotic. Luckily for the Nationals, the ESPN reporter was full of shit (presumably fed to him by a normally reliable yet uninformed source, not really buying it) and Rizzo was going to be the GM all along.
As far as them being good, yeah it sucks that they’re in our division. But the way I see it, if you’re a baseball fan, you’re a Washington Nationals fan right now. I certainly am. I love what Rizzo has done. But I’m kind of weird when it comes to GM’s (Ricciardi is my favorite GM in baseball).
They’re on the verge of putting something really awesome together. I really think they have a shot at winning the division in 2010. Of course, Jordan Zimmermann going down with TJ surgery hurts the chances there, but he’ll be back in 2011, and I think they have an even better shot in 2011.
Another note about 2011. The Phillies are going to be such an expensive club by then that they’ll have to start shedding contracts. Provided they exercise Romero and Rollins’ options, they’ll have 86.7 million dollars committed to just 8 players in 2011: Ryan Madson, J.C. Romero, Cole Hamels, Raul Ibanez, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Brad Lidge, and Ryan Howard.
Basically, they’ll be forced to fill in their roster with scraps or shed contracts. Of course, Drabek, Brown, and a few more prospects will be ready, but they’ll have committed basically 3/4 of their payroll to 8 of 25 players.
The Mets are dysfunctional.
The Marlins, Braves, and Nationals will most likely be in a 3-way race for the NL East crown in 2011. That’s crazy.
God, that depresses me more that ESPN wasn’t even referring to Rizzo. I gave them the benefit that they were just referring to Rizzo in some sort of uninformed manner. I mean really???? Rizzo’s been phenomenal, and I really mean that. What would he have possibly done to deserve to get the axe for a random front office exec?? The Zimmerman signing, great. The deal for Nyjer Morgan, fantastic from a defensive, leadoff, and “team” oriented standpoint. Basically getting Boras to balk at his outrageous demands for Strasburg….THAT was genius. I couldn’t believe the final signing price. Still great for Strasburg and record setting but basically everyone knew this guy was going to make bank. Rizzo took Boras to task, and I love to see that.
I’m the same way about GM’s. I have this man crush for guys that just make saavy decisions. I used to feel affection for Epstein until they gave him such a payroll that he was able to do whatever without any repercussion. Now, I just think he’s incredibly overrated. A bottle of Jack Daniels and myself could do as good a job with the Red Sox franchise as Epstein has done.
I don’t generally like parallels to the ’91 Braves because I do belive that was a combination of good management and dumb luck. Let’s be honest, how frequently can things come together the way that team did? To then have the salary and fortune to tack on a Greg Maddux 2 years later is nothing short of fortune. I get your point though about the way the Nats are building the team. The Zimmermans and Strasburg are a great base from which to start for a team. Detwiller and Ballester have underwhelmed a bit, but with the right chance, that Nationals team is in a great position for years to come.
Nationals are a long way from contending, they need a real RF, Adam Dunn to play first base (check), a 2nd baseman, a 3, 4, 5 pitcher (2 of whom should be veterans), and a catcher (not Ryan Doumit). I fully believe Randy Johnson is done. Its a shame La Duca isn’t there anymore but he won’t be able to help them in 2011. I think the Nationals should take a chance on Mark Prior, after all he is only like what 27, 28? He’d be a good bottom of the rotation guy. Just because the have a young rotation, doesn’t mean its a good rotation.
I used to always tell people Strasburg/Zimmermann/Lannan/Olsen/Pick one: Detwiler, Martis, Balester, Stamen, Mock would be one of the best rotations in baseball. Obviously, they lost Zimmermann and won’t have him next year, but they’ve still got loads of quality pitchers. Balester could turn out to be a legit number 2. Lannan, Strasburg, and Zimmermann are all pretty much legit aces. And they’ve got loads of young talented pitching. Once they improve their defense, they’ll have one of the best staffs in the league.