The future of the Washington Nationals under their new leader, Paul Toboni, is already looking a whole lot different than anyone had likely even anticipated. After being a bottom-feeder club for the majority of the last 6 seasons since winning the World Series in 2019, massive change has already begun.
We knew that things would be different under Toboni, as the Nationals had struggled mightily to adapt to modern trends around the league, but with change comes a lot of difficult conversations. There will be very minimal holdovers from the Mike Rizzo era in Washington when it comes to the front office, as we are now learning, and many longtime employees have been fired.
There will be an article addressing that in further detail later on, but for now, we will need to tackle another important topic. That topic is the future of the club from a managerial standpoint, where Toboni finally gave Nationals fans a little bit of clarity regarding the next skipper for the club.
Toboni said today that interim manager Miguel Cairo was told by himself that he would be a candidate within the team's extensive search for a new manager, according to Andrew Golden from the Washington Post. Before today, we had almost no idea where the Nationals were in terms of their search to find a new skipper, and these are Toboni's first public comments about who he will tab as his first manager. Toboni also added that he hopes the search for a new skipper will kick off "soon," as we all know he has his hands full with rebuilding his front office after a lot of tough conversations this week.
At this time, it is unclear who else the Nationals will be looking to interview for that next position, but it's clear that Cairo will at least likely be given an opportunity to prove to Toboni and his new staff that he has what it takes to be the full-time manager. It seems highly unlikely, given that Toboni is seemingly rebuilding the organization from the ground up, but perhaps there's a way that Cairo convinces Toboni to let him stick around in some capacity on the staff.
Rumors have already begun circulating about what other clubs such as the San Francisco Giants, Baltimore Orioles, and Colorado Rockies, among others, might be doing with their own searches. Former Nationals catcher Kurt Suzuki is a name that is floating around for the Giants' job, and perhaps he could get a look for the new gig in DC, but we really have no idea as of this moment.
Do you want to see Miguel Cairo stick around DC in any capacity? As always, please let me know on X, @DCBerk.