The Next Nationals GM Inherits a Team Worth Fighting For — If They're Smart Enough to See It

The question in Washington is no longer whether Mike Rizzo leaves. The question is who walks through the door after him, and whether they'll have the vision to recognize what's already sitting in the building.

I wrote last week that Rizzo's Houston interview couldn't be waved away, and nothing since has changed that read. A franchise architect of his stature doesn't sit across from the Astros — the same organization he beat in the 2019 World Series — out of idle curiosity. When a man who built a championship from scratch starts exploring other blueprints, you take him at his word. The era is ending. The Nationals need to accept that and immediately turn their energy toward what comes next, because what comes next is genuinely consequential.

Here's the declaration: the next Washington GM will inherit a more buildable roster than the job's reputation currently suggests, and if they misread this moment as another teardown opportunity, they'll set the franchise back three years it cannot afford to lose.

The evidence is on the field. Cade Cavalli finished 2026 at 13-6 with a 2.82 ERA, posting more than ten strikeouts per nine innings over nearly 182 innings — that is a front-of-the-rotation arm, full stop. Foster Griffin, an All-Star this season, went 13-4 with a 3.10 ERA and the kind of command profile that doesn't erode quietly. Two legitimate starters at the top of a rotation is more than most rebuilding teams can claim. The 2014 Royals won the pennant with a thinner front end. The 2015 Cubs, in their final year before contention, had one. Washington has two, and they're young enough to matter for years.

The position players tell a similar story, if you look past the final record of 77-85. CJ Abrams and James Wood both made the All-Star team and both finished with OPS figures north of .880. That's not a platoon quirk — that's a legitimate core. Add the pieces further down the lineup who showed real flashes, and you have a foundation that a competent front office can dress up rather than tear apart. The rotation depth remains a genuine problem: five arms spent the year on the 60-Day IL, and the back end — Mikolas, Irvin, the relief corps — was a consistent drain. That's the work. But it's the work of addition, not demolition.

The cautionary tale here is the 2016-era Padres, who looked at a roster with actual building blocks and decided to blow it up anyway, trading from a position of impatience rather than strategy. They spent four years in the desert before the pieces they kept — and the ones they added — finally cohered. Washington cannot afford that detour. The organization has already burned through two seasons below .500 before this one. The fans who stayed through 66 wins in 2025 deserve better arithmetic than another reset.

My read is this: the right hire is someone who sees Cavalli and Griffin as the spine of something real, who looks at Abrams and Wood and understands those aren't consolation prizes — they're the reason to push. The extension conversations around Cavalli that were circulating this summer need to be the first order of business, not a footnote. Whoever inherits this chair needs to sit down with a sharpened pencil and figure out how to fill the back of that rotation, because that's the gap between 77 wins and a wild-card race. It's a smaller gap than it looks.

Rizzo built something once. The next person in that chair doesn't have to build from nothing. They just have to be honest about what's already there.