Walters is back for another season as the official bar of the Natschat podcast.

Walters is the best spot to go before and after home games located at the southeast corner

of Capitol and N Streets, right across the street from the ballpark.

And welcome to a very special edition of Natchchat, along with Washington Nationals Insider Mark Zuckerman of Massinsports.com.

I'm Al-Galdi host of the Al-Galdi podcast.

We are recording this on Friday afternoon, January 23rd.

The day before Snowmageddon, we hope everyone is warm and safe.

It is hard to believe, but the first workout for Nats pitchers and

catchers at 2006 Nats spring training is just a few weeks away, February 11, but not among the

pitchers at Nats camp will be starting pitcher McKenzie Gore. The Nats on Thursday evening

announcing having traded Gore to the Texas Rangers for five prospects in a major trade.

The five prospects now account for five of the Nats' top 24 prospects for M.O.B pipeline,

including shortstop Gavin Fien as the Nats number five prospect.

And we are very pleased to welcome to the podcast, the architect of this trade.

Nats president of baseball operations. Paul Toboni, Paul,

it is great to have you on. We appreciate your time very much. How are you? Doing well,

guys. Appreciate you having me on. Yeah, appreciate you coming on. So lucky timing on our end to get you here

the day after the big trade. Just from a general perspective, you know, taking over the reins of

Nats baseball ops and pulling the trigger on a move like this, what was that process like for you?

And how do you know when it is time to pull the trigger on such a trade?

Yeah, all great questions. And I'm not sure I have perfect responses to any of them.

But what I'll say is, I think, given my history, like coming from the Red Sox and overseeing the draft

...