Bowden: "Man, Did I Ever Fuck Up"

"Cristian Guzman is a critical part of the future of the Washington franchise. You never see a winning team without a good shortstop," Bowden said. "Cristian is only 26 years old. He has been on a division winner the last three years. He has tremendous range. It doesn't show up in statistics, but baseball people know what it means to win baseball games." -- November 22, 2004

Consider this a sequel to the last time Jim Bowden admitted he sucks. Back then, Bodes tried to tell us how ashamed he was by having his big signing, Cristian "Punchline" Guzman, sit down in favor of the lovable but not actually very good Jamey Carroll. I guess he thought we didn't get the message, because now he's just screaming it.

In need of offense, the Nationals acquired shortstop/second baseman Deivi Cruz from the Giants in exchange for right-hander Ben Cox on Tuesday.

It's not a bad deal, and it would have been even better had it happened earlier. However, there aren't many teams on which Deivi Frigging Cruz is a clear improvement, and the man who assembled such a team should not be proud of himself. I've already spent far too much of my life watching Deivi Cruz -- he was the shortstop on an Orioles team whose best player was Jay Gibbons, if that tells you anything. Even so, he makes our shortstop position better. Hell, he might make our second base position better too, but I can't blame Bowden for that so I'm ignoring it. Then there's this:

Manager Frank Robinson and interim general manager Jim Bowden had a meeting on Tuesday afternoon to talk about which Minor Leaguers they should bring up. Both men declined to talk about what was said, but Bowden hinted that third baseman [Dutch] Zimmerman would be in the Major Leagues before Sept. 1.

There is a possibility that Zimmerman could replace either third baseman Vinny Castilla or shortstop Cristian Guzman.

To recap: Jim Bowden's two biggest additions to the team, players with a combined 4 years and $15 million left on their contracts, have been replaced by no-hit journeyman shortstop and a 20-year-old with fewer than 70 professional games under his belt. Even if you ignore the fact that starting Dutch's major league service time is going to cost the Nats a lot of money down the road (Bodes'll be long gone by then -- what does he care?), his pissing away of our pitching depth, his unprofessional behavior (publicly blaming his players for a mess he made), what else does Bodes have to do to prove that his second general manager stint is just as much a failure as his first?