"After two days of meeting with his fellow general managers at the Pfister Hotel, Nationals GM Mike Rizzo has a different sense than after past similar gatherings. After losing 196 games in his first two years at the helm, Rizzo entered these meetings with a third-place team led by a young core. The league took notice.

"The early sense I got is that there's a lot of interest in a lot of our players, which is good," Rizzo said. "It hasn't been like that for many of these meetings.""