Monday, March 2, 2009

Short Baseball Blog - Bowden On The Way Out?

According to some rumors being passed around the Internets (yeah, I said "Internets"), the Nationals are looking into the possibility of hiring Toronto Blue Jays Assistant General Manager Tony LaCava to replace their often-criticized and currently-under-federal-in
vestigation current General Manager, Jim Bowden. The rumors have been spreading around several blogs that have been collectively nicknamed "The Natosphere." Now normally, I scoff at blogs that aren't on washingtonpost.com, espn.com, or mlb.com, but at least 3 of the blogs that I visited (federalbaseball.com, firejimbowden.blogspot.com, and farmauthority.dcsportsnet.com) are listed on washingtonpost.com's Nationals Report blog and farm authority has even been able to sit down with big name, big league reporters like ESPN's Keith Law to get their information together. It isn't out of the realm of possibility that they could be on to something here. Tony LaCava is very well respected in the industry and has been considered for a couple of recent GM openings in Seattle and Pittsburgh to go along with these rumors. Don't believe the blog hype on Tony's resume? It is all backed up by Baseball Prospectus here. So far the whispers are little more than just that, whispers.

To be fair to the other side of argument, that these are unfounded and untrue rumors, Washington Post writer Chico Harlan recently refuted another rumor that the Nats had contacted MLB Commissioner Bud Selig about allowing them to forgo a rule that requires the Nats interview minority candidates here. The earlier reports that the Nats were making this request did not come from any of the 3 blogs I mentioned earlier, but were mentioned on them with links to the site where the news broke, so there still is a possibility the rumors on the 3 sites above could be accurate, just not about this one.

True or not, if you read my post a few days ago, I am all about running Jim Bowden out of town, so I may just be hopelessly optimistic that the Nats are going to do something about this, but until told otherwise, this is big news to me.

**EDIT: Legitimate (albeit Candaian) newspaper The Star has also acknowledged the rumors on LaCava, which therefore legitimizes the rumors.**

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