DC GM Mike Rizzo On Why The Washington Nationals Did Not Trade Adam Dunn.

Nats' Skipper Jim Riggleman was smiling when he entered the room for his daily pregame press conference and told the media that Adam Dunn had not been dealt. "I know Mike [Rizzo's] been very busy all day, and I haven't talked to Mike hardly at all, but I think all along we felt that it was unlikely that something like that would happen, and I guess if Mike got overwhelmed I would have gotten a call by now, he would've said we're going to do something, but I think everyone's happy with the way it's turned out, and Mike is very happy with what Adam does for us, and he would have had to be overwhelmed with something to get him to move Adam Dunn and obviously it didn't happen." 

"The reason that we didn't trade Adam Dunn," DC GM Mike Rizzo explained moments later in a press conference of his own, "...is that we never got a deal that we thought was equal or greater value to Adam Dunn. We were on the receiving end of the calls, we weren't making the calls, we got a lot of interest in Adam and just didn't see an equal return to what Adam Dunn brings to the ballclub on and off the field." 

Did you come close to trading Dunn? "We never...we never made a deal," Mr. Rizzo said. 

"We were engaged right up until the last couple of minutes," Mr. Rizzo admitted, "...and like I said, we just couldn't come up with a deal that I felt was good enough for the type of player that Adam Dunn is...": 

Mike Rizzo: "The goal was to make a prudent baseball deal...we certainly weren't going to take a step backwards, or do a multi-player, a quantity deal for Adam Dunn. This is a prototypical clean up hitter in the lineup that hits 40 HR's and drives in a 100 runs, and is a great clubhouse presence, and that means a lot to us and our fanbase and if there was a deal to be made we certainly would have made it, we proved that with the difficult trade that we had to make with Matt Capps, but we saw value for value there, and we just didn't see the value in return with Adam Dunn."

Asked if he felt the Nats now have to sign Dunn for it to be a good move to have not traded him, Mr. Rizzo responded that, "We are going to talk extension with Adam Dunn's representatives, we're certainly not going to discuss that with the media. Adam Dunn is a big part of our ballclub, we've shown that by not trading him for lesser value."