Mike Rizzo is no longer the general manager of the Washington Nationals, but he still believes his former ballclub is in a great position and that he is still the best man for the job, he told The Sports Junkies on Wednesday morning.
“I told them… when the owners sat down with me and gave me the news, I said, I still believe I’m the best person to lead this organization to a championship. I still believe that,” Rizzo told The Junkies. “I still believe in the talent of this team, we’ve got a lot of good young players, and we just don’t match up with the big boys of the National League and the depth of good players.”
Rizzo said he would put the Nationals’ good young players who are just breaking into the league up against any other team’s good young players in the game, but that lack of experience, coupled with a lack of depth on the roster, proved to be too much to overcome.
“When you look at how we played at certain points during the season,” he continued. “...and as well as we played in the month of May was as bad as we played in the month of June. And I think that is just the epitome of a team that has seven or eight or nine players who have and their major league debut this year and you have a bunch of young players on the team.
“They just don’t have the experiences to be consistent enough and gone through it enough to be a consistent everyday winner. But I think they’ll get there.”
When asked if he was given an ultimatum by ownership to fire manager Dave Martinez in order to protect his own job, Rizzo said: “Not discussing it. We had a lot of discussions over the almost 20 years I’ve been here… We’ve got a lot of water under the bridge, we had a lot of decisions to make, we’ve had a lot of discussions, arguments, yelling matches, hugs and kisses.”
Did you feel handcuffed in free agency? “The secret of being a good executive and a good general manager is you do the best you can with what you have,” Rizzo said. “... We didn’t in ownership's eyes, we didn’t do enough with it, so they made a change.”
Rizzo took the decision in stride, while admitting it was “crappy” that it happened, because this is what happens in big league baseball wen results aren’t going your way. “It was a trying couple of days since the weekend, but, hey, we’re all adults, we’re big boys, we know what we’re into when we take these jobs,” he told The Junkies. “And we had a helluva run and I’m proud of what we accomplished. And I know I did it my way, led the organization and the franchise the way I felt was best to maximize our potential and we had a lot of success.”
“... This is a performance-based industry and when you don’t perform up to the standards that ownership has set then it’s their option to make changes.”
Was he surprised by the timing of his dismissal? “I was a little surprised, but I wasn’t shocked,” Rizzo said. “Mark Lerner and I talked… at least every Monday since I’ve been there… we had a pretty consistent communication throughout the season. And I don’t think it was based on any one series. I don’t think the Red Sox series pushed anybody over the edge, but I think that it was a little surprising just because of the timing.”
He added: “When you are at a point when you are struggling in the season and you’re trying to make everything right and play better baseball, it could have happened at any time during the season.”
Having said that, Rizzo told The Junkies that he “never thought one time” that he had to general manager for his job.
“I think that my resume and my reputation in the game speaks for itself,” Rizzo said. “I hold my head up high by the standards that we’ve developed here. Remember we took over from MLB and this place was a circus act.
“I did it my way for 17 years, the Lerner family allowed me to have the keys to this franchise and build it and develop it in my personality and the way I wanted to do it. My goal was always to achieve greatness, but with integrity and honesty and professionalism. And I sleep well at night knowing that we did that.”
But looking back, Rizzo still believes this team is “not far from competing for a playoff spot” and in the long-term with the young players and what this draft is gonna produce for you [picking No. 1 overall” the GM job will be attractive for anybody who wants it as this is a team that is “really close to winning and winning for a consistent period of time.”
“The person that steps in here is gonna see that the cupboard is full,” he told The Junkies. “You’ve got guys with good service time to build around – James Wood, CJ [Abrams], [MacKenzie] Gore, and [Dylan] Crews, and that group of guys – and the next step for them is to add to that core and get more really, really good players, get a deeper lineup, get a deeper roster and to be able to withstand the rigors of 162 games in 185 days.”
Listen to the full conversation on the audio player above for all the insight from the Nationals former GM.