Does Jim Bowden Have To Be Guilty To Get Fired?

Since 1995, 25 of 30 Major League baseball teams have made at least one playoff appearance. None were run by Jim Bowden. The five that haven't seen postseason over the last 12 years: Toronto, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Montreal/Washington, and Cincinnati. 

That's right, two of the five teams that haven't made the playoffs in the last 12 years have Jim Bowden's fingerprints all over them.

Bowden's teams have gone to the playoffs exactly once in his career, not counting the strike-shortened 1994 debacle.

Baseball America came out with their top 100 list today. The Nats had one player on the list, Jordan Zimmermann, at 41.

Baseball Prospectus had just three Nats on their top 100:  Zimmermann (No. 56), Burgess (No. 65) and Detwiler (No. 81).

Coupled with Keith Law's 29th place ranking of the organization, and the fact that the team let $700K keep them from signing their first-round pick in 2008, it's a pretty bleak outlook for a team that is picking pretty high in each draft.

Bowden has had four years to retool the minor league system, and the Nats are only marginally better than when he took over. People can't keep blaming Bowden's lack of organizational success with the Nats on MLB's mismanagement of the Expos/Nats. 

It's been four-plus years for Bowden. How long is enough?

And not only in four years have they failed to produce a prospect from outside the U.S. at all, the guy they were hanging their hat on (Smiley Gonzalez/Daniel Lugo) is a fraud, possibly perpetuated by Bowden's hand-picked Special Assistant, Jose Rijo and their director of Dominican scouting, Jose Baez, who manages Rijo's training complex in the Dominican Republic. 

If they aren't complicit in the fraud, they at least allowed their friendship with the players' buscon (a childhood friend of Rijo) to cloud or alter their judgment, which they then convinced Bowden to offer the player a $1.5 million signing bonus, twice as much as the next highest team.

This episode guarantees that as long as Bowden is the GM, the Nats will not only have no presence down there, but what's worse is that they will will have a negative presence in the Dominican.

Not to mention the myriad mistakes he's made with the big league personnel. For every good move (Dunn, Dukes, Milledge), there's more than enough bad moves. Let's start with the reward contracts for out of shape players. 

Dmitri Young gets two years and $10 million to sit at home and fight his diabetes.  Cristian Guzman turns six months of hitting .315 into a two-year, $16 million contract going into an off-season where Orlando Hudson and Orlando Cabrera can't even get jobs.  Even middling utility infielder Ronnie Belliard, bless his soul, got a two-year deal.

From November 2004 until August 2006, when Stan Kasten demanded more emphasis on the minor league system, virtually every move Bowden made was younger for older, cheaper for more expensive, improving for declining.

Even the recent deal for Willingham and Olsen was a case of younger for older (and more expensive), not the way to rebuild a franchise.

Bowden has a long list of enemies in MLBby showboating in the media, backstabbing co-workers, treating lower-level staffers with condescension, and flat-out lying to players, managers, and others. 

Other GMs in baseball, including Kevin Towers of the Padres, say they won't even take his calls. The Chad Cordero incident is just one shining example of classic Bowden antics.

The Nats have become the laughingstock of Major League baseball, all under Bowden's watch. 

Does Bowden have to be guilty of a Federal crime to be ousted as the GM of the Washington Nationals?