A key is building a staff without groupthink.
While newly minted manager, Blake Butera, begins his tenure on paternity leave, he is expected to begin working on Monday. From what we heard, Butera has already been penciling up ideas. His phone was blowing up with congratulations on the birth of his daughter as well as his new job with the Washington Nationals. This will be a week that Butera will never forget.
This is all part of a process. The next steps will be setting up a coaching staff with President of Baseball Operations Paul Toboni. Give it time. We will have many more names here soon.
Expect Butera to be involved in more of the process than most managers. Toboni is collaborative in how he goes about making decisions. He is a people first type of guy. You have to be vetted to fit his culture, first and foremost.
“I want to sit with [a candidate] and learn him as a person. More than anything, I want him to understand my vision for the role before sharing it with everyone.”
— Toboni’s philosophy on hiring
“Building relationships [is] one of my favorite parts of the game, parts of life, to be honest, and those relationships are important to me. … I want them to feel like they are supported.”
Interview processes can sometimes come across as a snow job. When you go back and wonder how unqualified people get jobs, it comes from a lot of BS and embellishing that is like a trick or treat for the interviewer. But if you properly vet someone, you can usually get to the bottom of it.
Over the years, you wondered how a hitting coach like Darnell Coles could get a job given his checkered track record. Not only did he get the job with the Nationals, but he got an extension on top of that. But then again, how do you draft Seth Romero given his history or sign a malcontent like Elijah Dukes? Those are just some of the names, most have been purged from our minds because of the pain that comes with it.
In baseball, track records and stat lines tell a lot of the story. Butera and Toboni each had that, and so far, besides skeptical fans, the words have been very positive on both. Again, great people don’t always succeed. Winning at the MLB level requires good players. Some feel like this will be a re-boot of Tampa that Toboni and Butera will have to get more with less. Win despite low payrolls. Well, the Brewers made it to the NLCS with an Opening Day payroll of $140 million — the same payroll as the Washington Nationals — except the Nats effective payroll was far less because they were carrying $35 million for Stephen Strasburg.
Payroll is just part of it. If the Nats drafted and developed players well, they wouldn’t be in this situation. This was all covered in the Ken Rosenthal exposé in The Athletic that some believe started the process to fire former GM Mike Rizzo.
On Butera teams that he managed to first place, he didn’t exactly have a team of stars. Look at his 2018 Hudson Valley team that went 45-30. I recognize Cristopher Sanchez, Joe Ryan, Jonathan Aranda, and Jordan Qsar. While Qsar never played in the Majors, he was in Spring Training with the Nationals organization in 2024. He was only three years younger than Butera when he played for him that season.
While some want to define Butera by his age, others define him by the person he is to them. His ability to connect with young talent and make them into winners. He showed that he could do more with less. Butera puts emphasis on fundamentals, accountability, and growth. While he is chronologically only 33 years old, he thinks like someone with an extra decade or two.
“Blake’s drive and vision have always stood out. He’s not only immersed himself in the details of player development, but he’s learned how to motivate and connect with young talent. Blake has always taken full advantage of any opportunity he has been given, both as a player and a coach. This incredible opportunity will be no different.”
— said Greg Sullivan, Boston College assistant Baseball Coach, in an exclusive interview
“He has always had an incredible emphasis on fundamentals, accountability, and growth. I expect him to make the Nationals and the entire organization better every single day. He’s not just inheriting a roster; he’s inheriting an opportunity. The talent is there. With Blake in charge, the process now has purpose.”
In the process, you have to surround Butera with smart people and independent thinkers not “yes men” like former Nats’ manager Dave Martinez had in his dugout this season. They call that “groupthink.” The Nationals won a World Series in 2019 with Martinez and Chip Hale as his bench coach. There was no groupthink. They were kind of opposites on strategy. You saw that when Martinez was ejected from a game. Hale had a different style. Why was he let go? There’s an old saying, “If it ain’t broke — don’t fix it.” Was it any surprise how fast things deteriorated on making poor decisions?
Processes often fail when everyone thinks alike because it leads to groupthink, stifles innovation, and prevents the identification of blind spots. A lack of diverse perspectives means no one challenges flawed decisions, so the group cannot self-correct, and in sports where the smallest decisions can change a game — you need that collaboration with different thoughts. This is captured in quotes like “If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking,” by General George S. Patton.
That is my advice to Toboni. You are hiring a lot of like-minded people. Get out of your comfort zone and find some thinkers who will speak up and say, “Maybe we should be looking at Nick Kurtz in the draft — and if he isn’t available we should take Trey Yesavage. If he isn’t available maybe we look at Bryce Rainer or that Seaver King kid.” Where was that talk in Rizzo’s conclave on Draft Day 2024 or in 2022, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and especially in 2016. Maybe King will be the right choice. Maybe Cade Cavalli over Tyler Soderstrom was the right choice. But there are decisions that were made that we already know were flawed from the start.
There are a few holdovers from the previous front office like interim-GM Mike DeBartolo. That seems like a good thing. DeBartolo has proved to be an independent thinker and has been with the Nationals for a long time. From the analytics group, Jonathan Tosches is another person with a great background. And Reed Dunn from the scouting group is still with the organization. What we don’t know is their new titles and responsibilities.
The poor decisions over a decade behind the scenes is why the Washington Nationals stopped winning after 2019’s World Series. The team has not had a winning season since that milestone. Martinez and Rizzo needed more powerful voices around them. To me, it is mind-boggling how long it went on. Bad employees weren’t fired — they were moved to other positions keeping their same salaries as if they were being rewarded for doing a bad job. The bloat at the top caused issues at the bottom. When you don’t have Trajekt Arc machines because you are paying millions for that bloat at the top, you are affecting the process.
But again, you don’t need to spend millions on scouts. You need to be smart enough to do your job. We have said it before, we have a budget of $0 for scouting, and we saw the immense talent in the last 20 drafts, free agent classes, and trades. The reason that Toboni and Butera are here is because of the failures of their predecessors. Again, learn from the past — don’t repeat the mistakes.
