Cairo Loses Debut as Interim Skipper

Nats Chat

Mark Zuckerman & Al Galdi

Baseball, Sports

4.9 • 574 Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Tuesday marked a new era for the franchise, at least in the interim. Mark (From St. Louis) & Al examine the pregame comments by Miguel Cairo & Mike DeBartolo. Cairo was elevated from Bench Coach and was emotional when discussing his long time friend Davey Martinez. The Nationals lost his debut 4-2 at the Cardinals after a lengthy rain delay. (05:10) DeBartolo made it clear that the organization will be revamping how it uses data and technology while he is in charge. He has a busy first month on the job as the Draft is this weekend and the Trade Deadline is at the end of July. (17:10) Addressing the elephant in the GM room.... what to do with MacKenzie Gore? (22:30) Cairo has been an interim manager before as he took over the Chicago White Sox in the final few months of the 2022 season. Among the minor changes Cairo made, Bob Henley will return to D.C. as a MLB Field Coordinator. (26:20) James Wood nonchalantly made a leaping grab over the LF fence to rob the Cardinals of a homer. (31:00) Jake Irvin took the loss as he allowed four St. Louis runs in six innings of work. Mark mentions that it was another instance of Irvin showing declining velocity on the mound. (32:45) Keibert Ruiz was moved back to the 7-Day Concussion IL and Drew Millas returned from AAA-Rochester.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Walter Sports Bar has been recognized by many local publications as one of the best sports bars in Washington, D.C., located across the street from Nationals Park and open year round.
0:15.3	Runners lead second and first. Here's the pitch.
0:18.2	Swain a chopping ground ball towards short. Win has an underhand toss to second.
0:21.6	Mellis is out in a close play and the game is over.
0:24.6	The Nationals dropped.
0:26.6	Miguel Cairo's managerial debut by a final of 4-2.
0:30.6	It's been a rough 40 hours.
0:34.6	And it's been hard you know simply stepping up our game is not enough and we
0:44.0	need real change I'm excited to bring a fresh approach a fresh voice to this
0:49.5	role integrate more data more technology more innovation into our
0:54.0	decision-making across the
0:55.6	organization at all levels.
0:58.2	And welcome to Nat's chat along with Mattinsports.com Nationals insider Mark Zuckerman, who
1:03.3	was at Bush Stadium in St. Louis. I'm Al-Galdi host of the Al-Galdi podcast.
1:07.8	A new era of the Nationals has begun. Nats managing principal owner Mark Loner
1:12.0	on Sunday evening announced having fired Nats president of baseball operations and general
1:16.9	manager Mike Rizzo and manager Davy Martinez and announced having promoted Mike DeBardo to interim
1:23.6	GM. The Nats on Monday afternoon announced having promoted bench coach Miguel Cairo to
1:28.7	interim manager. De Bartolo spoke to reporters on Tuesday afternoon, at least in my opinion, was
1:34.4	really impressive, said some really encouraging things. The Nats finally, mercifully, maybe about
1:40.9	to truly embrace analytics. Cairo in his session with reporters on Tuesday afternoon
1:46.1	got emotional, and then the Nats played a game because there still is a lot of season left.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Mark Zuckerman & Al Galdi, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Mark Zuckerman & Al Galdi and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.