The Bright Side

Distinguished Senators has been very negative lately. I interrupted my vacation just to call some dude I've never met an asshole (not that I retract, mind you), and the year-end awards were a remarkable deluge of bile, even by my standards. So today I'm sheathing my liquid swords and keeping it positive. I present an entirely non-sarcastic list of the things Jim Bowden has done right in his short tenure.

• Cut Rocky Biddle. That saved us $2 million and plenty of late inning heartbreak.
• Let Einar Diaz go. Say what you will about new backup catcher Gary Bennett, but Diaz was at least as bad and made over 2 mil.
• Didn't seriously attempt to re-sign Tony Batista. Batista, by the way, just got $15 million over two years from the Fukuoka Hawks in Japan. The only way that makes sense is if the Hawks got the exchange rate wrong or misplaced a decimal or something. Let's see if the inscrutable Japanese press can explain it:

  Fukuoka Softbank Hawks's acquiring the Tony Batista infielder of 214 majors totaling home runs (FA from 31= Ecspoz) has understood the sixth. It became mutual agreement by the contract for 15 million dollar (about 1 billion 575 million yen) total two years.

  That's a lot more than he made with the Ecspoz.
  
• Signed Wil Cordero for one year, $600,000. It's incumbent on Frank Robinson to use Cordero correctly, to make sure he sees as few right-handed pitchers as possible, while Terrmel Sledge faces minimal numbers of lefties, but Bowden did his job on this one.
• Pursued Odalis Perez. It was his own fault that he didn't have enough money to sign him, but Bowden chose the right guy to after. Kevin Millwood, Esteban Loaiza, and Derek Lowe were out there, and Bowden got it right.

• "We don't want to spend money on a stop-gap solution," Bowden said. "That doesn't make sense. We're better off giving the ball to Mike Hinckley or John Patterson or Jon Rauch and continuing to develop our young pitchers within. Our dollars are better spent on player development and scouting and building the ballclub the right way."

  That's the best thing I've ever heard Bowden say.