Washington Nationals beef up their scouting staff with Desmond McGowan

Paul Toboni is continuing to bolster his front office staff with a heavy emphasis on the draft. He has hired Desmond McGowan from the Mets to lead the Amateur Scouting Department. McGowan comes from an analytics heavy background and will continue the overhaul of the front office.

McGowan actually has a very interesting background that reminds me of Mike DeBartolo. Out of college he worked for the KPMG accounting firm for six years before going into the sports world. He worked as an analytics intern for the NHL before working for the Yankees. After working for the Yankees for a year, he joined the Mets where he worked his way up the organization.

Under David Stearns, McGowan was the analytics voice in the MLB Draft room. Over the past few years, the Mets have actually been very successful in the draft. They have one of the best farm systems in all of baseball at the moment. Guys like Jett Williams, Nolan McLean, Jonah Tong and Carson Benge are just a few of the top prospects the Mets have drafted in the last few years.

They have been getting these top prospects despite not usually picking at the top of the draft. The Mets took McLean in the third round and Tong in the seventh round. AJ Ewing and Jacob Reimer also look like successful fourth round steals as well. The Nats have struggled to find this kind of value in the draft, so poaching a mind like McGowan is very helpful.

While McGowan is technically running the amateur scouting department, he is going to have a lot of help. This front office is heavy on people with experience in the draft room. Of course, Paul Toboni himself comes from an amateur scouting background. Devin Pearson and Justin Horowitz were also scouting directors before coming to DC.

The draft is clearly going to be this front offices baby and something they are going to take a lot of pride in. Given how the last decade of drafts have gone for the Nats, this is something that really excites me. The Nats need to build through the draft first and foremost. Then they can supplement around their homegrown core.

The draft misses are what doomed Rizzo in the end. With the Juan Soto trade, he should have had enough talent to really build something special. However, there is not a ton else around those guys he got in the Soto trade. Instead, there are a lot of maybes. Maybe Dylan Crews or Brady House break out, but that has not happened yet.

This process the new regime is embarking on will take a year or two to fully get rolling, but I am confident that the farm system will look a lot better in 12-18 months. That is where we will see the results first. The farm system will start rolling and then that success will come to the MLB roster. Welcome to DC Desmond McGowan!