A View from the Capital–General Mismanagement

There is not much to recommend Jim Bowden in a baseball era dominated increasingly by successful General Managers with Ivy League pedigrees. The issue is not how many of the best GMs in the game are smarter than Bowden, it is how with so many capable candidates to choose from the Washington Nationals cannot find their way out of the fun house.

Bowden has grabbed the spotlight for failing to vet his 16 year old prodigy, Esmailyn Gonzalez. The oversight is either gross mismanagement or fraud and only time can sort the matter out, but many here in the nation’s capital don’t really understand why it matters. Bowden made a rather large and costly mistake and it is just one more on a relatively long list.

Alex Remington, who does not cover sports but works for the Washington Post, ranked the General Managers in the game back in January . He put Bowden at the bottom of the heap along with Nick Coletti of the Dodgers and Brian Sabean of the Giants. He cited Bowden for the occasional good trade but said he “has absolutely no idea how to tie them into a larger strategy.” No short statement could better sum up Bowden’s shortcomings. The best illustration of the point is Bowden’s inability to sign Aaron Crow–the Nationals top draft pick in 2008.

The overall strategy of Nationals management has been articulated tirelessly by Stan Kasten who–speaking for majority owners Ted and Mark Lerner–has committed the team’s resources to first re-building the minor league system plundered by MLB, Inc. Once progress on Step A is complete or nearly so, then the team will seek to fill whatever holes exist through trades and free agent signings. Kasten has repeated this strategy so many times that it became known in DC as simply, “the Plan.”

Many teams say they are building from within and look to their minor leagues for talent. What is rare is to have a team so committed to that strategy allow its GM to fritter away a first round choice while he blusters about the sanctity of MLB’s slotting system. Especially vexing was Bowden’s complete turn on the final signing day as he ratcheted up his contract offers in a mad attempt to sign Crow in the last few hours before the deadline.

Remington’s evaluation excluded many of the new GMs and relied overly much on recent performance, but I doubt few would quibble about most of the rankings. There is a marked trend over the last two decades toward more cerebral GMs who possess often both elite academic and management training. Tampa’s Andrew Friedman has recently climbed to the top tier and he has an undergraduate and MBA degree from Tulane. He had the good sense to leave Bear Stearns and Wall Street while the getting was good and joined the Rays in 2004. He served a minimal apprenticeship before being named GM for 2006 by his investment banking colleague Matt Silverman.

The more traditional GMs like Walt Jocketty and Andy MacPhail worked their way up through baseball organizations learning the job one step at a time, but there have been fewer and fewer of those in recent years. What is most curious about Bowden is that he fits in neither camp. His college career seems to have been illustrious only for having roomed with the son of Pirates owner Dan Galbreath. He got a job with the Pirates through that connection. His time learning the job from the ground up was relatively short and six years after joining the Pirates he was named GM of the Cincinnati Reds at the age of 31.

Freidman and Theo Epstein were both even younger, but Epstein had a more impressive pedigree and he won the World Series almost immediately. Friedman has a World Series appearance now to his credit as well. Had the Red Sox floundered, Epstein’s age and lack of seasoning in the Red Sox organization, or some other, would have been cited as evidence when he was fired. So given that Bowden had neither an Ivy League management pedigree nor mentored long in a big league organization, surely he was an immediate success in Cincinnati.

In a word, no, Bowden did not succeed for several years. In 1995 Bowden won a division title three years after taking the reigns and had several good teams late in the decade, but then it all fell apart and he was fired along with his manager Bob Boone. Since the slide his most noteworthy achievements this decade were calling the MLBPA “terrorists” during the labor negotiations shortly after the Twin Towers fell. Then in spring of 2007 he was arrested for drunk driving and other sordid business where he gave the wheel to a woman who was alleged to be either a prostitute or, as Bowden claimed, his fiance’.

On the baseball side Bowden has done little to convince his current bosses that he belongs in the job. But now the Dominican who turns out to be four years older than he said he was, who was Bowden’s first explicit personnel move recommended to the new ownership underscores his lack of judgment. The resulting cry for his head has been deafening in DC. The only reason it was not louder is that so many had grown hoarse yelling for it in prior years.

Are Kasten and the Lerners hogtied by a lack of better choices? According to Brain Oliver at Nationals Farm Autority and Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus that is hardly the case. Carroll’s article does not even talk about Paul DePodesta who was born in the Washington area and of whom many continue to think highly. But at the top of his list is Jed Hoyer whose time with the Red Sox inspires only confidence. Would he want to leave New England and his beloved Red Sox? Would Podesta welcome a second opportunity and one to prove the Los Angeles media wrong? Are there others equally able?

Or is it better to play it safe and all Jim Bowden to negotiate with Stephen Strasburg-likely the most important draft commodity to fall into the Nationals’ lap since the move from Canada? Stay tuned, here in the capital the conventional wisdom here has taken such a beating over the past nine months, there may be no one with the confidence to pull the trigger. Or just paint Jimbo as HOPE .