{"id":252,"date":"2026-06-08T10:42:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T10:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernhomejournals.com\/?p=252"},"modified":"2026-06-08T10:42:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T10:42:26","slug":"the-nats-past-doesnt-matter-to-paul-toboni-thats-a-good-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernhomejournals.com\/?p=252","title":{"rendered":"The Nats\u2019 Past Doesn\u2019t Matter to Paul Toboni. That\u2019s a Good Thing."},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the eight months and seven days since Paul Toboni was hired to run the Washington Nationals, he has, in some loose order, moved his family, including four small children, from Boston to Georgetown; overhauled a front office; hired a whole new major league coaching staff; turned over an entire minor league operation; traded the team\u2019s top pitcher; introduced words like alignment and synergy to the organization\u2019s vocabulary; then watched the Nats, projected by Vegas to win around 65 games this year, enter June with a winningrecord and the most runs scored in Major League Baseball.<\/p>\n

Read more Ken Paxton\u2019s Impeachment Defense Lawyer Endorses James Talarico<\/a><\/p>\n

But because he\u2019s just one 36-year-old man, Toboni, the Nationals\u2019 president of baseball operations, hasn\u2019t done everything he\u2019s wanted to. Like, for example, he would love to travel with the team a bit more. Or, when he thinks about it, he hasn\u2019t spent a ton of time imagining himself as a Nats fan in recent years. (Can you blame him? Would you inhabit that headspace if you had the choice?)<\/p>\n

\u201cSo this is going to sound bad, but honestly I think to myself sometimes that I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve empathized enough with what the fans have gone through,\u201d Toboni told me at Nationals Park earlier this month. \u201cJust because I am so focused, as we all are, on: \u2018Hey, we\u2019re new to this and we just want to do it right. Forget about what happened in the past, we just want to do it right.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

For the four years before Toboni arrived, the Nationals often used the future to deflect fans\u2019 attention away from the present. Tired of losing? Here\u2019s a player in Double-A hitting his stride. Sick of watching your favorite players suit up for division rivals? Maybe we can interest you in the technology we\u2019ve reluctantly added in the bullpens. This is a preferred mental trick of wayward franchises: The future is whatever you need it to be.<\/p>\n

But Toboni doesn\u2019t dodge the tension between then, now and later while trying to build a sustainable winner. And by not understanding the pain of the post-World Series years in D.C., he seems suited to cure it in a meaningful way, seeing as he\u2019s much more interested in that outcome than slapping a Band-Aid on your wounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I always think about is when I was a fan of the San Francisco Giants growing up, if we were in this spot and we went out and signed a couple big free agents and they were popular names and whatever, but we weren\u2019t really ready for it, and then we lost in two, three, four years and we were in the same spot we had been in, I would be pretty upset,\u201d Toboni said. \u201cFar more upset as a fan than if I was led to be just a little bit more patient and thoughtful about how we do this right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

With these early asks for patience, Toboni has two things going for him: The first is that, again, he\u2019s new and has brought in dozens of new faces, including 33-year-old manager Blake Butera, to remake the Nationals\u2019 culture. And the second is that, through more than a third of the season, the Nationals (33-33) are within spitting distance of a playoff spot, which can be fun and refreshing no matter the sample size or whether it proves to be predictive. It was the first time since 2021that the team entered June with a record above .500.<\/p>\n

Read more Kenyan McDuffie on Youth Curfews, Trump and D.C.\u2019s Economy<\/a><\/p>\n

There is still some dissonance here, though, in that a process that\u2019s new to Toboni is certainly not new to Nationals fans, who are rightfully sick of seasons that end with way more losses than wins. Toboni rejects the popular sports narrative that laying a foundation has to come with baseball that\u2019s miserable to watch. So when he talks about doing things right, one element of that is continuing player development in the big leagues, which is clearly influencing results. <\/p>\n

Keibert Ruiz, once one of the worst defensive catchers in the league, has turned into an above-average receiver with the new coaching staff. By focusing on pulling the ball in the air more, center fielder Jacob Young has already smacked eight homers, three more than his career total (in 1,006 plate appearances) before this season. After struggling down the stretch last season, James Wood, the team\u2019s star outfielder, is the National League\u2019s leader in walks and runs scored, to say nothing of his 17 home runs, which are tied for second, and .936 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, which ranks third behind Shohei Ohtani and Kyle Schwarber. Shortstop CJ Abrams is tracking toward a career year, right behind Wood with a .914OPS.<\/p>\n

Plus, in the minors, the team\u2019s internal data says it ranks among the top systems for overall offensive production and pitching velocity.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t mean the Nats are full-on contenders quite yet, even if May was their best month in years. (For reference, from 2020to 2025, only the Colorado Rockies lost more games.) It does, however, mean they have a flammable offense that will have to hit \u2014 and hit, and hit \u2014 to keep propping up a pitching staff that\u2019s allowed the second most runs in the league. That offense scored 14 runs and crushed five homers Friday night. It\u2019s still the most productive in the sport. And so it may not surprise you, given how this is going so far, and given Toboni\u2019s general disinterest in looking backward, that he\u2019s made a conscious effort to not use the word \u201crebuild.\u201d <\/p>\n

He is stubborn about this, too, same as he\u2019s stubborn about sticking to his vision, to the idea of steady growth, unless the Nationals were to win at an even higher rate and force the front office to adjust. Of course, eventually, parts of trying to compete for championships will be out of Toboni\u2019s control. The Lerner family will decide whether to spend more on the roster. Even the most promising players can fail to reach their full potential for a variety of reasons, with injuries high on that list. But for one of his first core philosophies as the guy in charge, Toboni has decided to not saddle the Nationals with the losing that happened before he arrived. And it doesn\u2019t seem like that\u2019s going to change.<\/p>\n

Read more Fund While It Lasted<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington\u2019s new leader won\u2019t let the team\u2019s rebuilding woes \u2014 or early wins \u2014 speed up his plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-metro"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Nats\u2019 Past Doesn\u2019t Matter to Paul Toboni. That\u2019s a Good Thing. - Modern Home Journals<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/modernhomejournals.com\/?p=252\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Nats\u2019 Past Doesn\u2019t Matter to Paul Toboni. 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