As Washington Nationals fire brain trust, who's in charge of making No. 1 draft pick?

The team said Mike DeBartolo, the club's senior vice president and assistant general manager, has been named interim GM , with an interim manager to be announced Monday. DeBartolo will oversee baseball operations, including the draft, with input from "other key members of the department," the team said.

So just who is DeBartolo, the man tasked with overseeing that all-important No. 1 draft pick?

A Boston-area native, he got his undergraduate degree at Tufts and went back to school at Columbia to pursue his MBA degree. Well on his way to a career in finance, he changed course as his desire for a career in baseball nagged at him.

“Going back to middle school I always dreamed of working in a front office,” DeBartolo told The Boston Globe in an October 2019 interview. “I just didn’t think it was realistic. I didn’t have a playing background; I didn’t know anybody who worked in baseball.”

But his future wife, Kate, did, and one thing led to another, The Washington Nationals offered him a job as an intern in baseball operations in 2011.

“I went on faith. I had support from my wife and my family,” DeBartolo told The Globe. “The Nationals told me they didn’t have a job waiting for me. The biggest challenge was the uncertainty.”

He never left the building. Rizzo promoted him to assistant general manager in March 2019.

The No. 1 pick is key for the Nationals, who despite a 37-53 record, are building a strong nucleus. Youngsters James Wood, an outfielder, and pitcher MacKenzie Gore were named to the National League All-Star team on Sunday.

Among the players who have been linked to the Nationals with the No. 1 pick in mock drafts are high school shortstop Ethan Holliday -- the brother of Baltimore Orioles infielder Jackson Holliday -- and left-handed pitcher Kade Anderson of LSU.

The firings of Rizzo and Martinez the week before the draft would seem to be curious timing, but Bob Nightengale of USA Today said the reason was the commitment deadline the Nationals were facing. The team held a mid-July option on their contracts for 2026.

Whatever the reason, the responsibility of selecting the player they envision as the next Nationals star falls to DeBartolo and crew, And they can only hope to strike gold the way Rizzo did when he made the only two No. 1 overall picks in franchise history: Stephen Strasburg in 2009 and Bryce Harper in 2010.