

Nationals managing partner Ed Cohen, left, and GM Mike Rizzo. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)

As the hot-stove season approaches, the Nationals bulked up their analytics department Friday afternoon, promoting three members of the staff and adding two analysts to the front office, General Manager Mike Rizzo said.

The Nationals promoted former director of baseball operations Adam Cromie to assistant general manager and bumped his top assistant, Sam Mondry-Cohen, to director of research and baseball analysis. They also promoted Mike DeBartolo to manager of baseball research and analysis and hired two more analysts.

“We’ve got ourselves a full-fledged analytical staff, which has grown,” Rizzo said. “The brainpower in that group is amazing — extremely intelligent people, some Ivy Leaguers and great minds.”

Cromie started as an intern with the Nationals in 2007 and, over the years, slowly built the infrastructure for the Nationals’ database, a virtual warehouse with scouting and statistical dossiers of every player in baseball. Mondry-Cohen, a Penn graduate who once worked as a clubbie in the San Francisco Giants’ visiting clubhouse, was hired full time in 2010 after an internship.

Cromie, Mondry-Cohen and DeBartolo mine and sort all manner of information, study and create advanced statistics and lend a different perspective to the Nationals’ front office. While Rizzo is a dyed-in-the-wool advocate of scouts, he has great respect for the role Cromie and Mondry-Cohen have played.

“I’ve always been a big proponent of it,” Rizzo said. “It’s important enough that we increased that department. It’s a hugely important aspect of roster construction and building up a franchise. You combine that with some of the finest evaluators and scouts out in the field, I think you have the best of both worlds.”

While Cromie received a similar title, he will not replace departed assistant general manager Bryan Minniti. The Nationals plan to hire an assistant GM and vice president “soon,” Rizzo said. Rizzo declined to name the candidate, but the Nationals have spoken to former Reds assistant GM Bob Miller, a colleague of Rizzo’s from his days with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

“The person is going to be well versed and experienced and a guy that really fits in here with his personality but also with his job skills,” Rizzo said. “He’s somebody who can help this front office to do bigger and better things. I think they’re second-to-none right now, and I think we’re only getting better.”

On Thursday, Minniti joined the Diamondbacks as an assistant general manager. He is well respected around baseball and was crucial to the Nationals’ daily operation.

“He’ll be a GM,” one American League executive said. “I wish we had an opening so we could hire him.”