Nationals GM Mike Rizzo joined Bill Rohland and Danny Rouhier of 106.7 The Fan last night. Here are a few highlights…
- Asked which team's success he'd like to mirror, Rizzo cited the Montreal Expos first, as they were "one of the prototypical scouting/player development organizations back in the day." He also named the Braves and Dodgers.
- Rizzo explained that he's recognized the value of statistical analysis well before Moneyball was published. He noted, "We have a whole staff of sabermetricians."
- Rizzo defended his veteran bench acquisitions, explaining that a team can't have young players at every position, and the veteran mentors won't take at-bats away from prospects.
It’s nice to see that people haven’t entirely forgotten about the Expos. They were a good organization that got screwed over by MLB. And if it wasn’t for a court ruling that required the Twins to finish their lease in the Metrodome, the Twins and Expos would have been contracted together in 2002. It’s hard to imagine, these days.
agreed… in many respects, the Expos were the biggest casualty of the 1994 strike.
Blah blah blah, I was a scout, blah blah, I invented the vORP, blah blah, Matt Stairs needs a cane, blah blah blah, my team is going to lose 95 games… but next year, I swear we will be respectable.
— Mike Rizzo
cool story bro.
Does anyone know what happened when Minaya went to the Mets and didn’t exactly have the same kind of player development success as he had with the Expos. I mean what happened. I read certain things in the past about this but I can’t really remember them.
Minaya didn’t have any player development success with the Expos.
Dave Dombroski, Dan DuQuette, Kevin Malone and Jim Beattie were the GMs throughout the 90’s and drafted all of those great Expos players.
Minaya was a hatchet man hired by MLB. He traded Grady Sizemore, Cliff Lee and Brandon Phillips for Bartolo Colon. He also traded Jason Bay for Lou Collier.
After further review I think a better question might be what did the Expos do to produce so much talent? Who was really responsible or did they just get lucky?
I’d like to meet the department of sabermatricians who think the Werth contract is a good idea.
I laughed so hard I cried.
“…veteran mentors won’t take at-bats away from prospects.”
Oh so no prospect at-bats were lost last night when Jerry Hairston and Alex Cora started instead of Ian Desmond and Danny Espinosa….got it.