BREAKING: Washington Nationals Steal Red Sox Exec Paul Toboni to Lead Front Office

BREAKING: Washington Nationals Steal Red Sox Exec Paul Toboni to Lead Front Office

[Music] Hey, we have FT breaking news. This coming from Jeff Passen. The Nationals finalizing a deal to name Paul Taboni their new head of baseball operations. Taboni is 35 years old. He was a quick riser through the Red Sox front office to become assistant GM. He is in consideration for their GM job under Craig Brezlo. That’s going on right now. So, he was in the running for that. But the Nats were like, “Hey dude, want to run the front office instead of being the number two?” And he said, “Yes.” More from passing for a Nationals team in need of a serious infusion of talent. It’s worth noting that he ran the draft for Boston when they chose Roman Anthony, Marcelo Meyer, Christian Campbell, Peyton Tully, Connelly Early, and the prospects who went to Chicago in the Garrett Crochet deal. That is a monster performance over the last half decade. Yeah. Wow. Congratulations. Yeah. I don’t know anything about it. Congratulations. I’ve been reading about him. So, Ken Rosenthal and Britley have a story out. It just came out two minutes ago. I’m kind of learning as we go here more about the entire situation. Highly encourage you to check out the story. They’ve been doing a lot of work behind the scenes on all of this. But essentially, that was the Offercrats. I think he would have gotten the GM job as the real number two guy behind Craig Brelo, but for him, he gets to be the number one guy. Remember, they also have Mike Dearalo, who is the interim GM. I don’t know where he stands. Sometimes a guy will keep someone like that on if he wants to stay, at least for now, because I don’t think Debardo is getting a job elsewhere as the leader of a front office. So, it helps the continuation process. But I think this is interesting. I mean, you certainly like the track record of this guy. I mean, track records, he’s had like two laps around the track. He is young for this position. I mean, obviously Theo Epstein, you know, he was really young, but I remember I was on the call when the Red Sox did the draft and when I worked for the Red Sox and he was he was him and Rashardi were one of the guys that were like kind of leading up the call and I was just listening and I remember thinking, man, these guys are young. JP Rashardi’s kid. I forget his first name, but Paul was on that call and I was like, you know, it’s it’s amazing how young these guys are, but man, do they get after it. I don’t I don’t think anybody does amateur scouting, I feel like those guys don’t sleep. It’s like they eat and they type reports and they evaluate players. Is it Dante, by the way? Uh, I’m not Yeah, I’m not sure. I I Okay. I don’t know. I just know Dante and Mariano are the kids. Yeah, those are the sons names. Whatever. Irrelevant. I’m not sure. Um but but for Taboni, I mean, he was going up against some probably more notable names because they’ve been around for a while. So, according to Ken and Brit’s article, other executives under consideration included Dodgers senior vice president Josh Burns, Cleveland Guardians assistant GM Matt Foreman, uh Cubs GM Carter Hawkins and Diamondback’s assistant GMuel Saday, uh as long as as well as Red Sox assistant general manager Eddie Romero were also ones who interviewed, although I think some of these names ended up turning the job down. I know you guys had Josh Barfield on the show last week and he was in consideration but said no, right? Okay, so it Hey, first off, I want to stop for a second and I want to give a ton of credit to the Washington Nationals for doing something that is so stupidly obvious that you would think everyone in the top league for baseball in the world would do, but they don’t. They interviewed a lot of candidates. Why? because you want to gather intel. It is your opportunity to talk to people who have secrets and insights from what they’re doing. It is a no-brainer when you have this opportunity. And not every organization does this. Most of them do because they have a brain, but some of them don’t. It is a free opportunity for information. Right? If somebody super smart who was at the top of their craft or at the top of their industry, AJ came up to you and said, “Hey, do you want my free advice? I’ll sit down and have a lunch with you. Right? Let’s say you’re aspiring CEO of a tech company and and a tech company CEO says, “Hey, I’ll have lunch with you.” It’s like saying, “Nah, I don’t want to. I don’t even want to talk to you.” It is brain dead to do that. The Nationals took the correct route to talk to people. Even if they thought this was their guy all along, you still talk to six, seven, eight people. Why wouldn’t you? You can get, you know, if I was in charge of a team, I’d say, “All right, give me give me look at our organization and give me your best, give me a folder full of your best ideas on how to fix this organization.” And you could get a bunch of ideas and maybe one of them sticks and maybe maybe you hire them also as assistant GM if you other they get along with the guy you hire. I don’t know. But it’s a great way to steal free information and I’m all about getting free information if you can get it for nothing. Barfield, by the way, said no to Baltimore. That’s my bad because there are a few different front office jobs open right now. The Red Sox are interviewing for their GM job and that includes internal conversations. Craig Brlo is still the leader. They call it CBO with the Red Sox because they’re special for some reason. Most teams call it president of baseball operations. Um but that’s going on with the Orioles as they’re looking for a GM next to Mike Elias who’s the president of baseball operations. But back to Tabone for a moment. Kratz, this is president of baseball operations. This isn’t GM. There had been reports that they were looking for one or both if they were going to pry him away from the Red Sox. It looked like it had to be not only the guy to run the front office, but for the label to be president of baseball operations. The Nats are one of the cheaper organizations when it comes to paying GMs and coaches. But still, I’m sure there’s like a like a uh a basement number, right? a baseline number where it’s like, okay, even if we want to pay you at the bottom of the barrel for president of baseball operations, that’s still going to be, you know, higher than the GM number. Yeah. The lowest president of baseball operations would be higher than the highest GM. And the names have changed. I mean, I remember when guys were hired as a GM. Sam Fold was hired as a GM. And I was like, whoa, you’re the general manager. And right at the same time, Dumbrski came in and I was like, wait a minute. So teams have reshuffled that naming rights. But either way, are the Nats going to try to do something with their draft similar to what the the Red Sox did? Is that what they’re is that what they’re hoping for? Because the Nets really haven’t produced guys in their draft. They’ve drafted one ones and they’ve traded for guys. You got to produce in the draft. You got to produce in the minor league system. And that’s something the Nats haven’t done. Well, yeah. In Ken and Brit’s article, they said the Nationals since 2013 have drafted and developed two players with career wars above five. And they’re going off the baseball reference war. Two players. Neither of those players are with the organization anymore. I don’t think you’ll get the names just because you you’ll go, “Oh, wow. I forgot they were the Nats.” Sodto. Wait, since when? No. No. Drafted. So, I think he’s counted as a sign. Sono Sonto won. I mean, that’s where it gets a little tricky because they did 2013, but he’s I guess he’s not a draft intern. They’re talking about draft drafted players and they’re both pitchers that were in the organization. I don’t think you’re going to get either of them. I wouldn’t right off the top. No. Strawber was probably drafted before 2013. Oh, yeah. You’re right. So, I’ll give you the names. Nick Paveta and Jesus Lazardo. That’s it. Not a chance. I forgot both those guys were even with that organization. I know. Now, I don’t even know. Did Paveta even play for the Nationals ever? I don’t think so. No, he went to the Phillies. And was Lazardo was traded, too. And Lazardo was traded. Now, they had a a monster trade. They nailed their trade in my mind for Juan Stoodto. So, it’s not like they did nothing. And that was And now it’s Dartlo. People are going to say it was Rizzo, but from what I’ve heard from inside the organization, Departalo was the was key behind that stood trade. Okay, so now it’s Paul Tabone. Just in summary, he had been promoted a billion times already within the Red Sox or he’s 35 years old. He gets to run the Washington Nationals. He’ll probably have a new owner at some point over the next few years, too. And you know, I I’m sure um they’ll want to keep him on board if he brings the success over drafting like he did with the Red Sox. Todd, father, you and me grew up in Jersey. We liked to collect cards, but the way the process got was ridiculous. You open up a pack, there’s a bunch of cards you don’t care about, then you want to get certain ones graded. Takes forever, right? Then you want to maybe sell one. It’s such a to-do. Arena Club has been the solution for us. Arena Club has been a solution for everybody. You go online, go to Arena Club, and you check out what they have, put a little cash down, and you might get one of the best cards that you’ve ever seen in your life. an autograph card. And guess what? If you don’t like the card, easily you could sell it back and make a little cash. You never know what to expect. It’s a cool way of doing it. You’re going to get a surprise every time. And if you’re in the cards, this is something you really need to get into. Right now, you can get 20% off your first slab pack or card purchase by going to arena.com/foul and use code foul like Todd Father’s talking about with those slab packs. Every pack has a grail. That’s at least 20x the price of the pack. Check it out.

The Washington Nationals are finalizing a deal to hire Paul Toboni as their new President of Baseball Operations, per Jeff Passan. Toboni, 35, rose quickly through the Boston Red Sox front office as assistant GM and was a key voice in Boston’s drafts that produced top prospects like Roman Anthony and Marcelo Mayer. FT reacts to what this hire means for the Nationals, their future direction, and how Toboni’s draft track record could reshape the organization.

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