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The Washington Nationals have hired their General Manager, and it is 31-year-old Anirudh Kilambi, who is coming from the rival Phillies. The news was broken by Jeff Passan of ESPN.

Kilambi had been an assistant GM with Philadelphia, and was overseeing its R&D department. President of Baseball Operations, Paul Toboni, said he was authorized by the Lerner ownership group to hire a GM which did not happen right away, and in fact comes nearly three months after Toboni was hired.

“Ani’s skill-set and personality provide us exactly what we were looking for when we started this search. His critical thinking, humility and passion for the game are standout qualities that position him really well for this role. We are delighted to bring him on.”

— Phillies GM Sam Fuld published in a statement on Kilambi’s hiring with the Phillies in Nov. 2021

Prior to his four years with the Phillies, Kilambi got his start with the Tampa Bay Rays and worked his way up in his five years in that organization through their analytics department. He started with Tampa in 2015 as an intern. Nats’ manager Blake Butera had a lot of contact with Kilambi during their time together there. His final title there was the Director of Decision Science.

In college, Kilambi received his bachelor’s degree in Statistics / Operations Research and Management from the University of California a Berkeley and graduated in 2016 which happens to be where Toboni got his bachelor’s degree. While Toboni was there, they did not know each other in college and just had one year in which they overlapped. Toboni was an economics major at Berkeley.

And Kilambi went directly from Berkeley to an internship with the Tampa Bay Rays and got to work full-time after graduation. His internship with Tampa was after his junior year at Berkeley. The Phillies hired him directly from Tampa as an Assistant GM under President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski and GM Sam Fuld when Kilambi was just 27 years old.

Yes, it’s a small world after all.