Paul Toboni made a surprising but exciting decision yesterday when he named Ani Kilambi the new general manager of the Washington Nationals. As the GM, Kilambi will serve as the second in command to Toboni, handling more of the day-to-day aspects of running the club, like waiver claims and lower-level trades. Toboni was able to steal Kilambi from the Philadelphia Phillies, where he was highly regarded as their assistant general manager and responsible for beefing up their baseball research and development department.

At just 31 years old, Kilambi will fit right in with what is becoming the youngest front office in all of sports easily. He brings with him a strong background of analytical knowledge, but also a rare ability to communicate it to players and coaches in ways that help them understand as well. Let’s take a look at Kilambi’s beginnings and what got him to the point of being the youngest general manager in baseball, and the third youngest GM ever, behind Theo Epstein and Jon Daniels at 28 years old.

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Toboni Ties

Like POBO Paul Toboni, Ani Kilambi attended the University of California, Berkeley for college, where he double majored in statistics and operations research & management science from 2012 to 2016. In the summer of 2015, he got his beginnings in MLB with an AL East Team similar to Paul Toboni, joining the Tampa Bay Rays as a baseball research and development intern for a summer.

After graduating, Kilambi joined the Rays full-time as a baseball R&D assistant. He would then spend the next 5 years working his way up the Rays front office, taking on multiple analytical roles such as a predictive model analyst and assistant director of baseball R&D, before finally becoming the Rays director of decision science in 2021. Tops Rays executives often cited Kilambi during that 2021 season as one of the reasons for their strong bullpen and ability to continually churn out great relievers.

There aren’t many better organizations in baseball to jumpstart your career than Tampa Bay, and Kilambi proved he not only fit in there, but that he was one of their brightest young minds.

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Working For The Bad Guys

Unfortunately for the Nats, the Phillies became aware of his great baseball mind earlier than they did, as in November 2021, they poached Kilambi from the Rays to become an assistant general manager in Philadelphia. Along with the assistant GM role, the Phillies also put Kilambi in charge of the club’s research departments, as well as the use of data throughout the entire organization.

While this may seem like a lot to leave on the shoulders of a 28-year-old in his first year with a new organization, Kilambi not only handled it well, he thrived, doubling the size of their baseball R&D department in his first 2 seasons, taking the Phillies from one of the less analytically minded clubs in baseball to one of the more forward thinking clubs in the sport. The Phillies went to their first World Series in Kilambi’s first season with the organization, and he helped keep them a powerhouse in the NL during his entire tenure (just not in the postseason, thankfully).

New Chapter In The Nation’s Capital

Kilambi now takes on his greatest challenge yet, becoming the second in command in an organization with work to do to reach the heights he reached in Tampa Bay and Philadelphia. I imagine one of the greatest appeals of Kilambi for Toboni was his ability to turn the Phillies into an analytical machine of a team, something he no doubt will look to have him do here in DC as well. He joins the Nats at a pivotal time in the offseason, as the question of trading MacKenzie Gore and CJ Abrams looms. Additionally, more free agent signings are needed in the rotation, bullpen, and at first base, meaning there won’t be much downtime in Kilambi’s first winter with the club, as it’s straight to work on turning this ballclub around after a disappointing 2025 regular season.