Jim Bowden Is Paying the Price for Omar Minaya's Mistakes

The Washington Nationals went into their first All-Star break in 2005 with a record of 50-31 and was in first place in the National League East.

Since then, the team has a woeful 234-333 record, winning just 41 percent of their games during that span.

Many-well, most actually-have blamed Jim Bowden for this daze and malaise that surrounds the team.

But please, don't blame Jim Bowden.

Blame Omar Minaya.

Minaya, then the general manager of the Montreal Expos, made four trades between 2002 and 2004 that gutted the team's minor league system, trades that the team has yet to recover from.

None of them made any sense, and all will haunt both him and the franchise for years to come.

Some will defend Minaya by reminding us that the team was then owned by Major League Baseball, and that he was simply doing the owner's bidding. Mlb.com reported Bill Ladson, who was the team's beat reporter in Montreal, told me as much in an interview a year ago.

While that is true, you would think that he would have at least tried to trade value for value. But in every major trade, Minaya got hosed.

Did Major League Baseball tell him to do that?

Let's look at four of those trades:

TRADE No. 1-- Date: Mar. 26 2002. Expos trade OF Jason Bay and P Jim Serrano to the New York Mets for OF Lou Collier.

This trade came days before the the start of the season. The question is, why did Minaya do it?

Jason Bay had just completed his second year as a professional, splitting the year between Classs 'A' Clinton and Jupiter, batting .310 with 14 homers and 71 RBI.

Serrano had finished his fourth year with the club at 'AA' Harrisburg. Serrano went 6-3 with the Senators, crafting a solid 2.17 ERA, saving 20 games. In 54 innings, he struck out an amazing 73 batters.

The Nationals received in return Lou Collier, a nine-year minor league veteran who batted .252 with Brewers late in 2001.

Jason Bay has become a star with both the Pirates and the Red Sox. He batted .286-31-101 in 2008.

Serrano is still in the minor leagues and Lou Collier is out of baseball. Minaya traded two top prospects for a career minor leaguer.

Why?

TRADE No. 2 -- Date: June 27, 2002. Montreal Expos traded Lee Stevens, Brandon Phillips, Grady Sizemore, and Cliff Lee to the Cleveland Indians for Bartolo Colon, Tim Drew, and cash.

Grady Sizemore had batted .270 with a great .386 on-base percent during his time in the Expos farm system.

Lee Stevens, a veteran first baseman, hit 25 homers and drove in 95 runs for the Expos the previous year.

Brandon Phillips hit .298 in 2001 and was batting .327 at the time of the trade.

Cliff Lee was named to the 'AA' all star game just before he was traded to Cleveland. Baseball America named him one of the 25 best lefties in the minor leagues and one of the six best pitchers in the Eastern league.

Colon, in return, won 10 games for the Expos. Ten.

Sizemore batted .268-33-90, 38 steals in 2008. Cliff Lee went 22-3, 2.54 with the Indians last season and won the Cy Young Award.

Brandon Phillips has averaged .268-21-80, 23 steals, for the Cincinnati Reds. He won a gold glove in 2008.

Basically, three All-Stars in exchange for 10 wins.

TRADE No. 3 -- Date: Feb. 2, 2004. The Texas Rangers traded catcher Einar Diaz to the Montreal Expos for Chris Young.

Chris Young has gone 42-28, 3.72 since the trade for both the Texas Rangers and the San Diego Padres.

Einar Diaz was released by the Nationals because the team didn't believe he would ever become a "major league catcher."

TRADE No. 4 -- Date: July 11, 2002. Florida Marlins traded Cliff Floyd, Wilton Guerrero, and Claudio Vargas to the Montreal Expos for Carl Pavano, Graeme Lloyd, Justin Wayne, Mike Mordecai, and a player to be named later.

Forget all the other players. Let's look at Cliff Floyd for Carl Pavano.

The Expos later traded Floyd to the Red Sox for Sunny Kim and and couple of other non-descript players. Carl Pavano won 30 games with the Marlins in 2003 and 2004 before being traded to the Yankees.

Minaya also tried to trade several prospects to the Rangers for Juan Gonzalez after he had begun to have injury problems in 2003.

How much better would the Nationals have been in 2008 with the addition of Jason Bay and Grady Sizemore to the outfield, Brandon Phillips at second base, and Cliff Lee and Chris Young to the pitching staff?

My guess is that this version of the Nationals would have won 90-95 games this past season. These players would have added 85 homers and 29 wins to a team that had no offense and no pitching.

The team as a whole would have been very young, very deep and poised to be one of the best teams in the National League East for years to come.

Omar Minaya destroys the team's minor-league system and Jim Bowden pays the price for it.

Well, that's how Washington works these days I guess.