The Washington Nationals, aiming to reinvigorate their baseball infrastructure after lagging badly behind their peers in the six years since winning a World Series, opted for youth over experience in hiring Paul Toboni, a 35-year-old assistant general manager with the Boston Red Sox, as their new head of baseball operations.

A person with direct knowledge of the agreement confirmed Toboni will be hired to helm baseball operations. The person spoke to USA TODAY Sports on condition of anonymity because the hiring has not yet been announced.

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Toboni replaces Mike Rizzo, 64, as just the third general manager in the 20 years since the franchise moved from Montreal and was sold by Major League Baseball to the Lerner family upon relocating to Washington.

Rizzo helmed baseball operations since 2009 and guided the Nationals to five playoff berths between 2012 and 2019, culminating in a surprise run to the World Series championship. But the club has badly fallen off since, with a 326-480 mark since 2021, including a 64-94 mark this season. The continued regression resulted in the July firing of Rizzo and manager Dave Martinez.

Who is Paul Toboni? Nationals to make new hire

While assistant GM Mike DeBartolo was promoted to interim GM, the club cast a relatively wide net to determine a full-time successor, interviewing Chicago Cubs GM Carter Hawkins, among others. They settled on Toboni, who had a steady rise in the Red Sox organization.

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Toboni joined the club as an intern in 2015, was retained as an area scout and eventually promoted to director of amateur scouting in 2019 and vice president of amateur scouting and player development in September 2022.

He was valued enough in Boston to survive the purge of previous GMs Ben Cherington, Dave Dombrowski and Chaim Bloom. Current Red Sox GM Craig Breslow promoted Toboni to senior vice president and assistant general manager in November 2023.

Toboni played baseball collegiately at Cal and earned an MBA from Notre Dame. He will inherit an intriguing but incomplete core in Washington, with young All-Stars James Wood and CJ Abrams helming the lineup and Dylan Crews, the No. 2 overall pick in 2023, expected to develop into a solid regular.

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But the farm system, despite the addition of No. 1 overall pick Eli Willits in July, remains average, and the club’s inconsistency in developing players largely led to their downfall in recent years. Toboni, part of a Boston scouting and development apparatus that produced young stars like outfielder Roman Anthony, will aim to turn that around.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Nationals to hire Paul Toboni as head of baseball operations