BREAKING: The Washington Nationals Hire NEW GM Ani Kilambi

BREAKING: The Washington Nationals Hire NEW GM Ani Kilambi

The Nationals have made a hire at GM, hiring assistant GM from the Phillies, Anie Colombi. And before you get into it, yes, this guy is young. You are Locked on Nationals, your daily Washington Nationals podcast, part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. And thank you all for making Lockdown Nationals your first listen every single day as we are free and available wherever you get your podcast. And I am your host Ryan Clary. You can find me on Twitter at Ryanclary1 and we are part of the Locked on Podcast Network where it’s your team every single day. And in the breaking news of today is that the Nationals have hired a new general manager, Anie Colombi, the assistant GM coming over from the Philadelphia Phillies, 31 years old, the head of the R&D department with the Phillies. He will now be the general manager of the Washington Nationals. And everybody, I love this move. I really do like this decision. I’ll tell you why I like it. But today’s episode is brought to you by FanDuel. And if you want to be right in the middle of the action this season, visit fanuel.com and place your NFL live bets all season long. So, first and foremost, Anie Colombi. This is a really interesting hire. This is someone who has a lot of connections within the organization. We’ll kind of jump into that as we get on here today. But I love this decision. I think that the Nationals and what they have needed most this off season is a sense of direction. When you hire Paul Timone as your president of baseball operations here in town, the direction is like, okay, we want to get back into analytics and player development. Check that box off right now. And then the hires that are under him, you get Devin Pearson who helped Paul Tabone with the Red Sox and run their player development now doing that here. You go to another organization like the Pirates and yes, believe it or not, the Pirates are really good at drafting. You get the guy Justin Horowitz who ran their draft to come over here and help make some big time decisions here in DC. And then as far as the manager goes, you had a managing problem. You had someone who with Dave Martinez, great guy, great for the culture, but what he lacked in was the actual coaching aspect. There was no direction when it came to him as a manager. You have that now with Blake But who was a successful coach with the Tampa Bay Rays organization. He hired a very impressive coaching staff and now you finally get yourself a GM here in town and the Nationals they have a new direction and it is very clear what it is. It’s a datadriven operation. I love this. I think when the Nationals first made this higher, not going to lie to you, at first I was kind of like, okay, like who is this? And then you read into it and then you see what baseball pundits are saying and then you see the Jeff Passen report and then you Google him and find different articles and I saw a Philly’s beat reporter speak about him and do a little inside piece on kind of how he’s transformed the Philadelphia’s analytical department. And if you want that new direction, you’re going to be getting that right here in town with Anie Colombia. And this report was I mean just a lot of different things but I’ll just kind of give you the quick background on Colombia real quick. 2015 was hired with the Tampa Bay Rays as an intern of baseball operations there. Helped them with the R&D department. got a couple of promotions within them. And then back in 2020 or even like 2019 around that time frame, he was actually having helping Kevin cash out himself, giving them ideas on coaching philosophies, ideas on how to use players in different situations and kind of where guys should be in different lineups and how that turns out. This is someone who has not only just been a successful like off-field baseball nerd and analytic spreadsheet kind of guy. Like this is someone who has also been very much so integrated in the game by the Tampa and also by the Philadelphia Phillies. One part of this story that I saw, Phillies made their World Series run. By the way, we all know the big left-handed closer that has killed us for years now. Jose Alvarado, the closer who has obviously been an all-star. He has been a very good closer setup guy in many different situations with the Philadelphia Phillies. What’s the one pitch that you know him for? his cutter. Who was the one to tell Alvarado to throw his cutter more often? It was your new Nationals GM, Anie Colombi. Now, I’m not just saying like a aha, this is what you get here. But for the people out there saying, well, he’s got a background at the University of Cal Berkeley. Uh, he’s got a background analytics when it comes to the Rays and with the Philadelphia Phillies. What does this guy know about baseball operations and daytoday and having to try to figure things out? This is someone who can pinpoint exactly what is going on based on a spreadsheet, but also by watching just the game and seeing that like, oh, this is a nasty pitch that you have. Why don’t you throw that over 50% of the time? That has led to a lot of people’s success. And it does not just stop there. They also increased his uh the slider for someone that we obviously know again very well here in town with Jeff Hoffman. He had Jeff Hoffman throw his slider a lot more. That was something that he pinpointed as well that was like, “Hey, this is one of your better pitches. Why don’t you utilize it more and throw it more often?” This is a tricky situation because it’s not one of those things where like you can just have like, “Oh, let’s grab this analytics person. let’s throw him in the dugout and you got to tell these players how to do it. There is a way to go about it that Paul Tabone has even addressed earlier on this off season. And Paul Tabone has said time and time again there needs to be organizational alignment with how they view baseball with how they view going about people. In this article again by a few years ago, they talked about just how good Anie is g is just as a human and just as someone who gives directions from the front office and gives people numbers to work with. Like this is a winning recipe that obviously has had some success when it comes to the Philadelphia Phillies. Now, I think there are some big questions and the big questions might what will his exact role look like because I’m a firm believer in this. It’s going to be Paul Tabone signing off on the day-to-day decisions. And when it comes to someone working under the president of baseball operations in town, I think that this person obviously will have a lot of say in a lot of different things, but I just don’t know what his role will look like. I don’t know if he is going to have like the say to say, “We’re going to trade for this person. Paul, sign off on this. We’re going to trade this prospect and we’re going to get back this player in return. We’re going to trade away this player and get back this prospect in return.” or I don’t know how this process is going to work and how is he going to be integrated in day-to-day operations because as far as I’m concerned the way that you kind of differentiate a GM and a president of baseball operations is a general manager is more hands-on and when you have someone who’s 31 years old like how involved will that will they be for his first goound as a general manager he’s been an assistant GM working under uh Dave Dumbrosseski who is obviously one of the most better GMs across baseball at this point. One of the better executives that we have seen over the last couple of decades here and so he has got a lot of different traits that you’re like I want to sign off on that deal. So, where does this hire come from? Also, because I think that is also a kind of a tricky question because I’m not going to sit here and say, “Don’t worry guys, I know everything about Anie Colombia at this point.” I don’t. I’m finding out things as we go along here. But just connecting some dots. Paul Tabone worked under Dave Dumbrosski with the Boston Red Sox. Worked his way up in the organization with the Red Sox. Dumbrosseski goes to the Philadelphia Phillies. Anie gets hired as assistant GM there with the Phillies, ran their R&D department, and which by the way, Anie is credited as to building up that R&D department, of which was considered a few years before he got there to be the worst in all of baseball. But catch this, there was also an ESPN rankings that actually had them as the worst analytically sound team in all of professional sports in North America as far as the four major sports teams go. That is an accomplishment. And is it all because of Anie? I don’t know at this point. But I can tell you this much. This is someone who understands the game. He understands where he’s coming from. He has the personality to relate to players, to relay information to players, to be just kind of like that front of the steps kind of guy and who I think will be a really good hire here in DC. And I think that this a lot of sense for where the Nationals are. And oh, by the way, going back to the Nationals talking earlier about we’re not sure if we’re going to hire a GM. Well, they just did. And I think that they hired a really good one. So, as we get on going next week early on, we’ll talk more about this hire as we know more about it, just kind of what his role will be, more of his background. But until then, you guys have a good one. Go Naps.

Washington Nationals chart a bold new course by naming Ani Kilambi—Philadelphia Phillies’ assistant GM and R&D mastermind—as their new general manager. Ryan Clary spotlights Kilambi’s rapid rise from Tampa Bay Rays intern to Philly’s analytics innovator, emphasizing his hands-on influence with pitchers like Jose Alvarado and Jeff Hoffman.

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