Reports Suggest Nationals Ready To Fire Mike Rizzo Within 24 Hours

Yahoo Sports is reporting that Mike Rizzo, who has been the Nationals’ acting General Manager since Jim Bowden was forced to resign last March, is about to be fired and replaced by former reliever Frank DiPoto, currently the Director of Scouting for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

If this happens, Washington is going to lose a lot of that good will that came with the signing of Stephen Strasburg last night.

Now, DiPoto is saying he knows nothing, and team president Stan Kasten is busy saying he’s not the guy to talk to; so maybe Yahoo got it wrong. But they are citing multiple independent sources, so I have to believe this is about to occur.

And the timing is certainly right.

Teams typically make payroll forecasts and personnel decisions for the following season sometime in August. It would make sense that the Nationals would want their permanent GM in place before that process begins.

Forget for a moment how good DiPito may be. Perhaps he is the right man for the job. I don’t know.

But for goodness sakes, what else was Mike Rizzo supposed to do to keep his job?

Before joining the Nationals in 2006, Rizzo was the Director of Scouting for the Arizona Diamondbacks and was credited with transforming their moribund farm system—one of the worst in 2000—into what many considered the best in the National League just six years later.

In his three years with the Nationals, the team’s farm system has gone from the very worst in all of the major leagues to middle-of-the-pack, quite an accomplishment in that short a time.

And when Jim Bowden was forced to resign over the “Smiley-gate” scandal, Rizzo took over and quickly began to change the demeanor of the team’s Major League roster.

He signed Joe Beimel and reshaped the bullpen. He gave some young starters the opportunity to prove themselves at the big league level. When Lastings Milledge showed he had yet to grow up, he was quickly exiled to the minors. Elijah Dukes soon followed.

Things didn’t turn around, however, until he acquired Sean Burnett and Nyjer Morgan from the Pirates for Joel Hanrahan and the aforementioned Milledge.

He fired Manny Acta at the All-Star break and over the last 31 games, the Nationals are 17-14. Over the last two weeks, they have the second-best record in the National League at 11-3.

But perhaps his most impressive work was getting Stephen Strasburg to sign that $15.6 million contract.

Scott Boras has a long and amicable history with Rizzo dating back to his time with Arizona. Often, Boras has publicly said that he considered Rizzo a knowledgeable, hard working and impressive baseball man, someone he could work with.

And now, with a track record of making lemonade out of lemons, after turning around a laughing stock of a team and pointing them towards respectability, they are going to fire him?

Now, I’m not a cynic, but this just doesn’t smell right.

Scott Boras likes Mike Rizzo. Mike Rizzo has a track record of getting Boras’ high profile clients—players like Stephen Drew—to sign. The Nationals need to get Stephen Strasburg signed. But they want to replace Rizzo?

So they keep him around to finalize the Strasburg deal, and then when he’s used up his usefulness to the organization, they let him go.

The Nationals wouldn’t do that, would they?

I’m going to reserve judgment until there is a formal announcement.  But firing their GM after a string of solid successes would be baseball heresy. I mean, think about this for a moment: The Nationals won just 26 games in their first 88, but have won 17 in their last 31.

I’m pretty sure that’s called progress.

So the Nationals are considering stopping said progress in its tracks in order to bring in a new management team so that they can … make … some … progress?

Groan.

I really hope Yahoo got it wrong.