With the first overall pick of the 2025 MLB Draft, the Washington Nationals selected shortstop Eli Willits.
Willits is the rare player to be selected first overall by an interim general manager. The Nationals fired GM Mike Rizzo, as well as manager Dave Martinez, last Sunday and had Mike DeBartolo, previously Rizzo’s assistant general manager, take over as interim GM.
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Willits, a 17-year-old out of Fort Cobb-Broxton High School in Oklahoma, is the son of former Los Angeles Angels outfielder Reggie Willits. Reggie, who went in the seventh round of the 2003 draft, spent six seasons with the Angels from 2006-2011.
It’s unclear if the 41-year-old DeBartolo will be the long-term decision-maker for the Nationals — he has certainly spoken as if he expects to be able to steer the franchise’s future — but the team gave him control of one of its most important decisions.
The Nationals received the No. 1 pick after hitting on a 10.2% chance to go first in the MLB Draft lottery and will have $11,075,900 in slot money to attempt to sign Willits.
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Willits is joining the Nationals at a chaotic time
There is generally an expected time to fire your general manager, if you’re thinking of firing your general manger, as the Nationals were likely doing last year after a fifth straight losing season. Most GMs are let go between the trade deadline and end of the season, giving their team time to find a successor and giving that successor the full offseason to shape the team how he wishes.
The Nationals didn’t do anything close to that.
The Nats fired Rizzo on July 10, exactly one week before he would’ve made one of the most important front-office decisions in baseball. The ownership deemed Rizzo unfit to make that pick, then decided his former lieutenants should handle it, despite having questionable job security themselves.
Mike DeBartolo (left) was tasked with the Nats’ first overall pick after the firing of Mike Rizzo (right). (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
(The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The Nationals’ problems stem from their ownership, and that’s not changing unless the Lerner family decides to look into selling again. The franchise has seen its high points under the Lerners, most notably the 2019 World Series title, but the team has stagnated to an astonishing degree in the years since. Waiting years too late to fire Rizzo, then doing it with this kind of timing, is in line with how this franchise has been run recently.
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Under Rizzo, the Nationals’ list of first-round picks over the past decade is littered with outright, unquestionable busts: Carter Kieboom (2016), Seth Romero (2017), Mason Denaburg (2018), Cade Cavalli (2020), Elijah Green (2022). The jury is still out on some players, but even Dylan Crews, the No. 2 pick of the 2023 MLB Draft, has struggled in the majors so far.
That’s how an organization rots after winning the 2019 World Series. Not being able to keep any of Bryce Harper, Anthony Rendon, Trea Turner or Juan Soto long-term hurt, but the reality is the Nationals wouldn’t be a playoff team even if they had paid up to keep all of those players, especially given that James Wood, C.J. Abrams and Mackenzie Gore, their current three best players, were all acquired in the Soto trade.
Rizzo certainly had his strengths as a general manager. When he took over the franchise’s baseball operations, the team had just posted back-to-back 100-loss seasons, had a mediocre farm system at best and was reeling from multiple scandals brought by his predecessor, Jim Bowden. With the help of the picks that became Harper and Stephen Strasburg, Rizzo turned the team around through some shrewd trades and risky decisions that paid off.
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That’s why the Nationals kept him around even after the big-league team hit hard times following the 2019 title, but his failures at drafting and developing — not to mention falling behind the rest of the sport in research and development — have pushed the team to the brink of a failed rebuild.
The Nationals should be nearing playoff contention right now, and instead they sit in last place in the NL East at 38-55. Their farm system is starting to run low on impact prospects. They can’t pick higher than No. 10 next year due to draft lottery rules. Gore is as close to free agency as Soto was when the Nationals traded him because they were worried (understandably) that he wouldn’t sign a contract extension.
So the Nationals finally turned the page on Rizzo, though it remains to be seen if they look outside the organization for their next GM or put their trust in DeBartolo. Willits fulfilling his potential would go a long way toward getting things back on track, considering he would be the organization’s first real win with a major draft pick since, arguably, Lucas Giolito in 2012.
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No pressure, buddy.
