A Time of Tumult? Nah, Status Quo for the Nats

The Nats fired Mike Rizzo and Davey Martinez yesterday, which precipitated the following threads from me on Bluesky.

Mike Rizzo is an iconic baseball GM and the Nats were lucky to have him. It was also (past) time for him to go. Davey Martinez won a World Series with his dynamic personality and a veteran team, despite his managerial acumen. I might actually start watching full games again.

— Josius (aka Trader Joe or TheNatsBlogJoe) (@josius.bsky.social) July 6, 2025 at 7:49 PM

Ironically, the Lerners waiting so long to fire Davey and (to a lesser extent) Rizzo probably actually tarnished a pretty cool legacy for them in bringing a World Series back to DC. If Davey was canned in 2021ish, when he should've been, he could've still been "the guy who won it all from 19-31."

— Josius (aka Trader Joe or TheNatsBlogJoe) (@josius.bsky.social) July 7, 2025 at 10:38 AM

Well, since then, the Nats have named Miguel Cairo interim manager and Mike DeBartolo as interim GM.

Chelsea Janes, my favorite baseball writer and all-around brilliant person, has already said on DC radio that DeBartolo is likely to remove the interim title eventually. In my estimation, that probably means the same will be true for Cairo’s interim title, assuming the rest of the season is passable. Somewhere around .500 between now and October. I find myself longing for MLB to adopt the idea of a “Caretaker Manager,” a la English Premier League soccer. The caretaker rarely actually gets the full-time job across the pond; they are supposed to just keep things afloat through the process of finding someone… well… better.

Sadly, the Nats appear to remain locked into this cycle of the Lerners pretending they care and reacting to situations they can no longer ignore, all while hoping they luck into something that works. It’s not like this is new. Since winning the World Series in 2019, the Nats have had a .407 winning percentage across almost 800 games and never exceded 71 wins in a season. They never won an NL East title under Davey Martinez.

This team has never needed either new investment by the current ownership group or new owners more. I don’t see either one coming anytime soon. Buckle in for some drama that leads to mediocracy at-best and sinking below the Rockies and Pirates at-worst.