Baseball Prospectus Chimes In On Bowden

If you haven't seen it, here's BP's look at the Nats first offseason moves, written by Chris Kahrl. Link. Kahrl tends to thesnooty (snotty?) side, so take his harshness with a grain of salt. A couple of key quotes:

Then there's the question of his genius with problem-solving and shopping. I touched on this in this past season's edition of the Prospectus. Faced with the very basic need to assemble a rotation, Bowden failed time and again to find adequate solutions, instead settling for wishful thinking, starting with Pete Harnisch, but also involving Jimmy Haynes, Ryan Dempster, and a cast of dozens. Rather than turn over modest successes, Bowden instead got more and more unrealistic as the years passed. Most of his turnover started to look like turnover for its own sake, smacking of indecisiveness at best, but more likely representing something less than his once-vaunted reputation for having a clever knack for finding talent.

Ouch. But if Bowden got fired, doesn't he have the failure he needs to temper his conduct. After all, a lot of people have been fired and said it's the best thing that ever happened to them, including Joe Torre and Michael Bloomberg and Larry King! Also, how many of Bowden's prior mistakes were related to the fact that Cincinnati is a small-market team with a small-market budget. DC is a heap-big market! Ask Dan Snyder!

Kahrl also considers the names in which Bowden may or may not have expressed an interest:

Finally, there's his announced shopping list this winter. The good news? So far, it looks like he has the sense to let Tony Batista walk, but his interest in Vinny Castilla has been telegraphed early and often. The other not-so-good news? He thinks he needs a right fielder on a roster crammed with too many outfielders. He knows he needs help on the left side of the infield, but the danger is that he won't leave space for Brendan Harris or Maicer Izturis or Josh Labandeira. Credulous reporting has him mulling offers for Endy Chavez, instead of recognizing Chavez as scrap.

Yes. Endy Chavez must go. Vinny Castilla must not arrive. Where are the names like Koskie, though? Chris Kahrl, you're no Peter Gammons. And why, Mr. Kahrl, are you interested in a an infielder named Izturis? Doesn't Caeser give you the willies enough?