Red Sox lose key executive (and top candidate to be Craig Breslow’s GM) to Nationals

As the season comes to a close, the Red Sox are losing a key member of their braintrust.

The Nationals intend to hire one of Boston’s assistant general managers, Paul Toboni, as their new head of baseball operations, a source confirmed to MassLive. ESPN’s Jeff Passan first reported the news. Toboni was one of two top Sox executives to interview with the Nats in recent weeks along with longtime lieutenant Eddie Romero.

“Ultra-aggressive with his ideas,” manager Alex Cora recently said of Toboni. “He’s a soundboard to a lot of people in the front office.”

Toboni, 35, was a fast-riser through Boston’s front office who was elevated to a senior vice president/AGM role under chief baseball officer Craig Breslow last winter. Breslow intends to hire a general manager (as his No. 2 executive) this offseason, and Toboni was considered a clear favorite to assume that title, which was last occupied by Brian O’Halloran under Chaim Bloom. The chance to run his own team clearly appealed to Toboni, leaving the Red Sox down a key person in the present and a top GM candidate in a few weeks. Breslow is expected to look both inside and outside the organization for his No. 2.

Toboni is a San Francisco native who played baseball at Cal and first joined the Red Sox as a baseball operations intern in 2015 after a brief stint in a similar role with the Athletics. He worked as an area scout and assistant scouting director before being promoted to the club’s director of amateur scouting role in September 2019, then overseeing the next three drafts. Those drafts saw the Red Sox take Marcelo Mayer and Roman Anthony as well as other major leaguers like Hunter Dobbins, Nick Yorke, Luis Guerrero. Toboni spent just over a year as a vice president of amateur scouting and player development under Bloom, then joined Breslow’s top tier of assistants in November 2023. He has been a key part of the braintrust along with Romero, O’Halloran, Michael Groopman, Raquel Ferreira and Taylor Smith in 2025. Toboni’s focus since last fall’s front office restructuring has been on development throughout the organization, not only in the minors but also at the major league level. He has been a key negotiator on major transactions as well.

Toboni will be one of many former Red Sox executives running a club, joining Arizona’s Mike Hazen, the Cubs’ Jed Hoyer, Philadelphia’s Dave Dombrowski, Pittsburgh’s Ben Cherington and (soon to be) St. Louis’ Chaim Bloom. Washington fired longtime general manager Mike Rizzo (and manager Davey Martinez, at the same time), coincidentally, following being swept by the Red Sox over Fourth of July weekend. Bedford, Mass. native Mike DeBartolo has been serving as the Nationals’ interim GM since then.

Read the original article on MassLive. Add MassLive as a Preferred Source by clicking here.