Nationals Sign GM Mike Rizzo to Multi-Year Contract Extension
Washington Nationals president of baseball operations and general manager Mike Rizzo has agreed to a multi-year contract extension, the club announced Wednesday.
Rizzo has been with the franchise since 2006 and is in his 15th season as the head of baseball operations in Washington. The 62-year-old’s current contract was previously set to expire following the 2023 season.
While the exact length of his contract has yet to be revealed, Rizzo is now poised to remain with the Nationals organization for the foreseeable future.
The Nationals enjoyed eight straight winning seasons under Rizzo from 2012-19, which included five playoff berths, four NL East Division titles (2012, 2014, 2016, 2017) and a World Series trophy in ‘19.
Though only two players remain from that championship-winning roster (Patrick Corbin and Stephen Strasburg), management has done a tremendous job of turning over the roster while replenishing the farm system with high-level prospects, transforming it into one of baseball’s most elite.
“Mike and I have talked and worked with each other almost daily for 17 years. Together with my family and the entire Nationals staff, we’ve always shared the same dream: to make the Washington Nationals a team that our fans could love and be proud of,” Nationals Managing Principal Owner Mark D. Lerner said in a press release. “We have all worked collectively to build what was essentially an expansion team with no Major League depth into a contender, and then into a World Series champion. We’ve experienced some tough losing seasons and we’ve hung championship banners, and we’ve done it all together.”
Rizzo and his staff made the difficult decision to begin the club’s current rebuild in 2021, which saw icons like Max Scherzer and Trea Turner traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers as part of a full-scale sell-off. But that was only the beginning.
Juan Soto was next on the chopping block a year later, procuring a massive haul of future assets – a package headlined by CJ Abrams, MacKenzie Gore, James Wood and Robert Hassell – in a blockbuster deal with the San Diego Padres.
“We are once again hard at work to build a championship contender in D.C.,” Lerner continued. “We now believe we have the beginnings of a roster filled with promising young players and exciting prospects at nearly every position. While we once talked about winning World Series rings for our baseball-loving fathers, Mike’s family and ours now look forward to winning even more rings for our children and grandchildren — and, of course, for every other Nationals-loving fan and family everywhere. We are excited about our future.”
The Lerner family hired Rizzo as an assistant GM when he joined the Nationals in 2006 before promoting him to GM just three years later. He then took over baseball ops in August 2013.
“I love being part of the Washington Nationals organization,” Rizzo said. “Nearly 17 years ago, Ted Lerner and his family asked me to help build the Nats into a winning team. Together, we managed to find success within just a few years, winning multiple divisional titles and, ultimately, bringing D.C. its first World Series championship since 1924.”
“It has been a pleasure to work alongside ownership as we put the pieces together for our initial team build-up and run. Now, we believe we are developing the next generation of contenders and champions. We deeply believe in our process and in our progress. The next few years are going to be ones no Nationals fan will want to miss. My family and I want to thank the Lerner, Cohen and Tanenbaum families, Alan Gottlieb and Nationals management for their trust and commitment to winning another World Series. I am excited to be a part of that commitment.”
Rizzo’s contract extension marks the second that Washington has handed out this season, after inking skipper Dave Martinez to a two-year deal last month that includes a 2026 club option.
With it, the Nationals have two pillars of their organization sticking around for at least the next few seasons as the team continues building toward brighter days and looks to avoid a fourth consecutive last-place finish.
“It was important to get Davey done,” Rizzo told local reporters. “Because of the chemistry in the clubhouse and a lame-duck manager with three months (left on his contract) is not the way you want to go through this thing and grind it out and teaching players and developing players at the big league level.”
Despite heading for a fourth season without a playoff berth, the Nationals have amassed an exciting young core at the big-league level – centred around Abrams, Gore, Josiah Gray, Keibert Ruiz and Lane Thomas – that’ll continue to grow as more players graduate from their loaded farm system led by Dylan Crews.
-Thomas Hall
Twitter: @ThomasHall85
Photo: Keith Allison. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.