Washington Nationals: Grading Mike Rizzo’s 10 biggest trades

How do we grade the deals that Washington Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo has made since coming to D.C?

The MLB trade deadline is right around the corner, and the pressure is on Washington Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo. Ever since Rizzo was promoted to interim general manager in March 2009, he has been an extremely active dealer all over the baseball calendar.

Rizzo rolls with a simple strategy; draft your core talent, and trade for the supplementary pieces. Just look at some of the best Nationals players over Rizzo’s tenure. Bryce Harper, Stephen Strasburg, Anthony Rendon, and Jordan Zimmermann were/are all key players drafted when Rizzo was at least a part of the front office, along with Ian Desmond and Ryan Zimmerman who were pre-Rizzo selections.

Those are his core guys right there, who he then surrounds with solid players via trade. And it is a sound philosophy; by drafting your best players, you have cheap, controllable talent for the next decade. Elite players cost an arm and a leg in trades, and come with shorter, pricier contracts. Rizzo looks to go after those mid-level players on the trade market – the type of guys who can deepen your roster, but won’t mortgage the future.

I’m not saying Mike Rizzo is stingy. Just look at the contracts he forked over to Max Scherzer and Jayson Werth, or the reported offers he made for the top closers on the market last winter. Rather, he is just smart with where he spends his resources, especially when it comes to trades.

Rizzo has made plenty of critical trades during his time; let’s hand out grades for his 10 biggest trades with the Washington Nationals.