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Photo from Paul Toboni’s LinkedIn

At a Hot Stove event, former GM, Mike Rizzo, referred to a long-standing employee as part of the furniture. The same could have been said for Rizzo who was the first hire by the Lerner family when they purchased the Washington Nationals in 2006. Rizzo came to the team as an Assistant General Manager (AGM) under GM Jim Bowden. When Bowden departed a few years later, Rizzo was elevated to run the GM position until he was fired on July 6.

The team promoted long-time assistant GM, Mike DeBartolo, as the interim-GM simultaneous to the Rizzo firing, and for the past month the ownership group has been searching for a permanent GM with DeBartolo among the many candidates. The natural hunting grounds for a GM was to look at top AGMs with other teams. One of the obstacles, as a source told us, you must seek permission from a team to interview a current employee, and that has made this a situation where you might not get to interview everyone you hoped to get on the list. However, several of the Nats’ top targets were interviewed — and it led to a decision as first reported by Jeff Passan of ESPN that the Nationals have hired Boston Red Sox assistant general manager, Paul Toboni, as their head of baseball operations.

A subsequent report by Britt Ghiroli of The Athletic reports that Toboni will be the President of Baseball Operations and will hire a GM.

The Nats had a pick from several of the top AGMs in baseball, and a source tells us that Toboni’s strong scouting, draft, and player development background was what pushed him over the top above other candidates. The 35-year-old also has a strong background in analytics, played the game through college, and has an MBA.

In the process, the Nationals contracted a top search firm with SpencerStuart as they helped get the ball rolling. The Nationals were compiling names back in August per our source, and the key was to get this hiring completed by the end of the season. After the GM is hired, the next task will be to lead the search for the team’s manager that is now held by interim-manager Miguel Cairo.

The team had filled their Chief Revenue Officer vacancy in August with the hiring of Chris Zaber who replaced Mike Carney after he departed mid-season. The team brought in AARP as their jersey patch sponsorship and should be readying an announcement, when appropriate, for a naming rights sponsor for the stadium. That process also used an outside firm with  Excel Sports Management leading that search.

You could say that 2025 is the year of change for the Washington Nationals and Toboni will oversee the change on the player operations side and Zaber on the business side. Much of what Zaber can accomplish will affect Toboni because a source told us before that the more the revenue is generated as a net increase, the more the team will spend on new player payroll.

Bringing in someone like Toboni might have come with assurances on future spending, but Toboni is also touted as one of the people who helped grow the Red Sox back into a winning team and fixing their flawed and depleted player development system which is one of the best in baseball now.

“Paul is ultra aggressive with his ideas,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said last week. “He’s a sounding board to a lot of people in the front office.”

As Passan points out, Toboni had been a key figure in Boston’s draft in recent years as the Red Sox had already put together a farm system full of talented prospects that included players who already were promoted to the big leagues, with Passan listing Roman Anthony, Kristian Campbell, Payton Tolle, Connelly Early and those who were included in the Garrett Crochet trade. Boston sent Kyle Teel, Braden Montgomery, Chase Meidroth and Wikelman González to the White Sox in that blockbuster trade.

Even after trading key prospects for Crochet, Baseball America ranks Boston as of last week as their 5^th best farm system in baseball with the following rankings:

• 2025 Midseason Rank: 5
• 2025: 1
• 2024: 13
• 2023: 10
• 2022: 11
• 2021: 21
• 2020: 22

Top prospects in the Boston system include Tolle, Early, OF Jhostynxon Garcia, LHP Brandon Clarke, and 1B Justin Gonzales. Baseball America listed some of the issues with SS Marcelo Mayer at the top of that list. So yes, not everything was perfect there. And as we know, GMs just like prospects, are best judged in hindsight.

The Nats are certainly dealing with some injury issues in their farm system with their Top-2 pitching prospect recovering from surgeries with Travis Sykora (UCL) and Jarlin Susana (latisimus dorsi) on the mend. Sykora will miss all of the 2026 season.

Baseball America ranks the Nats farm system at №21 with a C- ranking. You have to think that Toboni will do a major overhaul of the system led by Eddie Longosz, currently. Will Longosz keep his job? That is to be seen.

The amateur draft group in 2023 was restructured with Danny Haas, Brad Ciolek, and Reed Dunn hired to replace Kris Kline and Mark Baca who were reassigned to other spots in Rizzo’s front office. As we first reported, Ciolek left this week and Haas had already left, and that is understandable as a source told us that their contracts were expiring. As we also reported, only Dunn was asked to stay on — but we will see what Toboni ultimately decides with the draft side.

What we expect is that several of the Rizzo assistant general managers will not be retained. A source tells us that the Nationals have an extensive group of top level management and not enough boots on the ground. You could certainly see a shift of resources back to more traditional scouting.

Because Toboni comes with a background as a college player and scout, he has shown an eye to recognize talent which not everyone can do at the amateur level. When he talks, you can get a feel for doing the research and vetting players. How he talks to high school and collegiate coaches, teammates, and families. Some consider his approach to be cutting edge.

“I really don’t think a ton has changed in terms of the pillars of our evaluations. We like middle of the field players who can hit. Generally, they’re usually really good athletes and provide value defensively.”

— Toboni told Joe Doyle of @OverSlot_

The Toboni résumé starts with his time as an amateur baseball player and playing prep ball at St. Ignatius College Prep in San Francisco, CA. Toboni then attended college and played baseball at Cal Berkeley where he earned his B.A. in Political Economics and played in the College World Series in 2011. His baseball career was cut short by hip injuries that required surgeries. With the dreams of playing as a pro gone, Toboni decided to get his MBA at Notre Dame.

Before graduating from his Master’s program, Toboni took his first baseball job as an intern in 2013 with the Oakland A’s followed by a letter he sent to former Bosox GM, Ben Cherington, that led to an internship in 2015 with the Red Sox. Boston hired him full-time as an area scout, and he was quickly promoted to the Director of Scouting in 2019. His ascent continued to the VP of Scouting and Player Development then most recently to the AGM and Senior VP role after the 2023 season.

This is a developing story.