Jim Bowden Doesn't Know How Old You Are, Will Give You $1.4 Million To Feed To A Goat

Having endured eight years of the Bush administration we know that incompetence plays very well in DC politics, but I had no idea that incompetence played so well in DC baseball. Well, OK, I had some idea, but that's my opening line and I'm sticking with it, cornhole. The point is this: Jim Bowden, General Manager of the Washington Nationals, is dumb.

Take, for example, the time he compared the Major League Baseball Players Union to Al Qaeda, or the time he was caught driving drunk. Maybe more to the point he has a thoroughly mediocre record as a GM in Cincinnati and DC. Bowden's teams have been at or above .500 in only six out of sixteen seasons, and that's giving him credit for 1996 when his Reds went 81-81. Overall, not a record that inspires confidence.

What might be obvious from the above record, Bowden just isn't very good at building a baseball team. The noted Mariners blogger Dave Cameron of USSMariner.com said it best, "If Bowden was a general contractor, he'd build houses with nine bedrooms, six garages, no bathrooms, and half a roof." If this needed any explaining, Bowden has a penchant for acquiring players that don't fit his roster. He is renowned for having teams with tons of outfielders and no pitching, or six third basemen, and no shortstops.

To further illustrate the point, get out your paper and pencil and Let's all play The Jim Bowden Quiz!!!

Question 1: You have six outfielders for four spots on the roster creating a logjam at the position. What do you do?

1. Attempt to trade one or more extraneous outfielders for players who play positions of need
2. Do nothing
3. Compare Don Fehr to Hitler
4. Trade for more outfielders
5. Drive drunk

And the answer is: Who gives a shit. Up to this point Bowden just hasn't been a very good GM. That's OK, I suppose, in a way. There are, have been, and will be many GMs who aren't very good, and some of them will have long tenures as the head of multiple organizations for no reason that can be discerned. The real problem here is this:

A top Washington Nationals prospect and recipient of the largest international signing bonus in team history is not who he appeared to be. Esmailyn Gonzalez, who is listed as 19 years old on the team's roster, is actually 23-year-old Carlos Alvarez Daniel Lugo, four sources have told SI.com.

The Nationals, owned by the Lerner family, gave the shortstop from the Dominican Republic a $1.4 million signing bonus on July 2, 2006, and trumpeted his arrival as a sign of their commitment to acquiring top-tier talent. (Players from Latin America are not subject to the draft and can sign with the team of their choice.) "This signing is symbolic of the Lerner family's and incoming club president Stan Kasten's pledge to become an industry leader in scouting and player development,'' Washington general manager Jim Bowden said at the time of the deal.

Um, yikes?

So, to sum up, Bowden gave a 20 year old $1.4 million on the assumption that he was 16, then held a press conference to exclaim what a great GM he is. Or, to put it another way, Bowden took $1.4 million from his bosses, bought a pet goat and fed him $1.355 million. What exactly does a guy have to do to get fired around here?