For the Washington Nationals, yesterday’s 8-1 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals was more of the same. Currently the second-worst team in Major League Baseball, the Nats have already suffered an 11-game losing streak this season—one they broke by beating the Colorado Rockies, MLB’s worst team. Moreover, Washington’s struggles aren’t new: since winning the World Series in 2019, the franchise has suffered five consecutive losing seasons.
In an apparent effort to turn things around, Nats owner Mark Lerner last Sunday fired manager Dave Martinez and general manager Mike Rizzo, replacing them on an interim basis with bench coach Miguel Cairo and senior vice president and assistant general manager Mike DeBartolo. It’s not unusual to change leadership midseason—the Baltimore Orioles, Pittsburgh Pirates, and aforementioned Rockies all axed their managers earlier this year—but the move came at an intriguing time. This weekend, the Nats will have the No. 1 pick in the MLB Draft.
Looking at the bigger picture—and realizing the World Series was six years (!) ago—Washingtonian can’t help but wonder: why do the Nats keep losing? What will it take to improve? For answers, we spoke with Scott Allen, a Washington Post sports reporter.
The following Q&A has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Why did the Nats fire Rizzo and Martinez—and why did they do it now, at this point in the season and so close to the MLB Draft?
I think a lot of people felt like this is something that should have happened a long time ago. Dave Martinez, the World Series winning manager, gave a kind of baffling press conference in which he was asked about the reasons for the team’s struggles and who’s to blame, and he told reporters that coaches are never to blame. It was just kind of a weird press conference. You’re in the middle of this losing streak. You’re losing to really bad teams, and you figured if a firing was going to happen, it was going to happen then.
For both Rizzo and Martinez it was, okay, these guys won the World Series in 2019. You can never take that away from them. But it also doesn’t mean that they need to stay in their positions forever. I mean, maybe you get a little bit of a grace period, but what is it, six years since then? It was time for a change.
What role have Rizzo and Martinez, respectively, played in the team struggling since winning the World Series? What other reasons are there for the team being bad?
It’s a little bit harder to pinpoint how much of it is on Dave Martinez. I mean, he obviously sets the lineup day to day, and you can quibble with where people are batting, and who’s playing where in the field, and whether he has a command of the clubhouse.
With Rizzo for many years, from 2012 to 2019, he was putting a playoff-caliber team on the field. They had great players from Bryce Harper to Juan Soto. From 2012 on, their ability to find talent in the draft and develop them, especially hitters, is by far the worst in baseball by the measure of offensive WAR. (Editor’s note: WAR is short for “wins above replacement,” a statistic that measures how many wins a player’s on-field production is worth compared to a minor league replacement player at the same position).
Some of it is just regression. The bullpen has been abysmal, the worst [earned run average] in baseball. Outside of [star hitter] James Wood, CJ Abrams—their shortstop who could have been an All-Star this year—and then their ace MacKenzie Gore, they’ve got a lot of guys who are just not contributing anything offensively on the roster, and the young pitchers from last year have taken a step back.
What’s the role of ownership in the team’s struggles?
After Mike Rizzo was fired, he did his weekly spot on local radio, and he didn’t directly blame ownership, but there’s no secret that really since the World Series, they have spent hardly any money on player acquisition during this rebuild. So, I think ownership deserves quite a bit of blame in that respect. At the same time, no one is saying that they need to be a top-five spending team in baseball to compete. Rizzo is right in that you got to make do with what you have. Even if they spend just a little bit more, the players that they have acquired, the players that they have drafted and tried to develop haven’t really panned out. So there’s plenty of blame to go around.
How would you evaluate Rizzo and Martinez’s tenures, respectively? What did they do well, and what did they not do well enough?
Rizzo was an incredible wheeler and dealer. He made some fantastic trades for the team during his tenure here which led directly to the World Series title. They’d be in a much worse position than they are now even if he hadn’t been able to get such an incredible haul when they decided to deal on Soto in 2022. But the fact is, they don’t have a ton of depth in the organization because of the poor track record drafting over the last decade plus.
Martinez, he will forever be remembered for that 2019 season. This was a team that was 19-31 early in the season. Everyone at that point was calling for his firing. He was in his second year with the team. Somehow, he was able to keep that clubhouse together. They squeaked into the playoffs and then made an incredible run to the city’s first title. That will be his primary legacy.
What kind of impact will firing Rizzo have on the team’s approach to the MLB Draft? Who are they likely to take with the No. 1 overall pick?
That’s the big secret. It could be Ethan Holliday, a high school [shortstop] who’s the brother of the young Orioles player Jackson Holliday, who also went number one a few years ago. They’re also looking at [Kade Anderson], a left-handed pitcher from LSU.
What should people know about DeBartolo and Cairo, and in what ways are they different from their predecessors?
DeBartolo has promised a fresh approach—a more tech and data and analytics-driven approach to their scouting, to their development. And that’s been a criticism of this organization for years.
Cairo was the bench coach for Dave Martinez. Martinez took an old-school approach. If a Nationals player hit a big home run and bat flipped, Martinez would meet them on the top step and not celebrate with them right away. It seemed like he was saying, “Hey, I didn’t appreciate that.” It sort of took the fun out of the game. That was just kind of who he was. It’s a very small sample size, but already I think we’ve seen players seem to be a little bit looser on the field. They’ve introduced an Uncle Sam top hat and an American flag cape as part of their dugout celebration under Miguel Cairo.
Do you expect the Nationals to look for a new GM and manager from outside the organization, and if so, who are some candidates fans should know about?
I think there’s very little chance, barring a huge turnaround in the second half of the season, that Miguel Cairo is the manager for this team next year. Just get them to the end of the season, it’s a way to do that, and then you do a more thorough search for a permanent replacement. I think DeBartelo has a better chance to be here longer term. He’s essentially auditioning for a more full-time job.
Where do things stand in terms of the team possibly being sold?
It was only a few years ago that [the Lerners] said they were exploring a sale of the team, and now they said, ‘No, we’re in this for the long haul.’ Certainly anything could be had for a price, you would think. If someone came to them with an offer of $2.5 billion or more, would they sell? Maybe. The name that has come up in the past as a potential buyer is Ted Leonsis, who already owns the Capitals, the Wizards, the Mystics. He owns the TV station Monumental Sports & Entertainment Network, and the big void in his programming schedule is the summer.
What has to happen for the Nats to once again be a contender?
A lot has to go right. They need more solid, even slightly above-average players to complement the few stars that they already have on the roster. In terms of the young players that they have now who have shown flashes of being able to contribute at this level, they need to continue to develop.
