I think a lot of moves he made to generate intrest in nationals no matter how horrible everyone else knew they were (Guzman) so I'll give him a LITTLE credit for that.

That said though I wouldnt want him with 500 miles of my team (and the sox did interview him whewwwwwwww......)

Hard to really say anything nice about him.  His teams have generally had nice farm systems, but he hasn't been able to make a whole lot of them.  

There was a lot of talent in Cincinnati, but instead of building around them, he went out and got Griffey instead of pitching.

The Expos were absolutely depleted under Minaya, but to Bowden's credit, he did let John Patterson, Chad Cordero and Ryan Zimmerman play.  He didn't trade Patterson, which was probably tempting last year.

His trade history is otherwise pretty dismal though -

Even though Sean Casey for Dave Burba looks pretty decent, the trade blocked Paul Konerko, who was eventually flipped for Mike Cameron, who was eventually turned into Ken Griffey.  Griffey and Casey's contracts also became major issues.

Now, I'm not sure how much blame he really gets for Griffey - obviously Griffey was expensive, but no one saw the horrendous injuries coming.  If he can be criticized for something in that series of deals, it's that after he cut costs with the Casey trade, the deals just got more expensive, culminating with Griffey's albatross contract.  

Bowden's kind of GM that looks to land the big fish, thinking that such a big fish will turn his entire club around.  And that leads to questionable decisions.  I'm not sure if this comes from the pressures of working under Marge Schott, but it's burned him once, and it will burn him again.

Obviously the Soriano trade is the worst of all - Brad Wilkerson is better than Soriano by himself.  A one year rental of Soriano and the 10 million that comes with him is bad enough.  But since Soriano isn't willing to move to the OF, and Bowden's read the reports and quotes, he's creating a logjam at second.    

Bowden was perfectly set with Wilkerson and Vidro hopefully healthy next year, but he went and messed it up to land that big fish, which he apparently thinks Soriano is.

I can give him some credit for getting rid of Vinny Castilla though - even though it's his fault in the first place that Vinny was with the team, he saw that Zimmerman was ready, and fixed the problem by dealing the over the hill veteran.  He even got a pitcher who's not too old, and can eat innings at the back of a rotation.  That Lawrence was in a pitcher's park is at least mitigated by the fact that RFK is more of a pitcher's park.

Christian Guzman for 4 years is also inexcusable.  At 4 million+ a year, it's atrocious.  

While Frank Robinson obviously isn't a great manager, he does bring the reputation, and might bring in fans.  So it's not completely fair to ride Bowden for retaining Robinson.

It's kind of funny that he gets bashed so much, because Bowden actually knows his farm systems very well.  He just tends to get blinded by money and big players, which then leads to horrendous decisions.  That's what he should be derided for, not any ignorance.

FACT; JIM BOWDEN LIKES OUTFIELDERS

LOTS AND LOTS OF OUTFIELDERS...

FACT;  JIM BOWDEN ONCE PUT TOGETHER AN INFIELD THAT INCLUDED:  "POKEY" AND "GOOKIE"!!!

The "minimal vitriol" rule pretty much keeps me from making an extensive posting of my thoughts, but here are a few issues, as I see them:

Beyond the specific moves, which mostly stack up against Bowden, the biggest problem I have is that he doesn't seem to have a plan.  He reacts to problems as they arise rather than anticipating them; he goes after the biggest name and the toolsiest OFs without really considering the long-term goal of building a consistent winner.  Perhaps that's just the nature of the situation he's in in DC, but I didn't get a sense that he was any better in Cincinnati.  That was my biggest problem with most of the deals he made as Nats GM -- it doesn't matter if Junior Spivey, or Preston Wilson, or Castilla, or even Esteban Loaiza work out well or not -- none of them were ever going to be part of a truly good Nationals team.  Why waste energy, spare talent, and money pursuing/signing them when what you really need is to think about the next five years of the franchise's future?

Bowden traded away Jerry Owens for the brittle Alex Escobar. The same Jerry Owens that led the Southern League in batting average and is now amongst the leaders in the VWL. The Double A transition was obviously not the hurdle that Bowden must have envisaged when he deemed the former UCLA wide receiver expendable.

i think brian lawrence for vinny was a nice pickup. jose guillen has worked out well for them, even though at the time i thought they should just promote rivera for the same job (and keep izturis). um... that may be it. everything else he's done is somewhere between bad and unspeakably bad.

I think you guys have covered all the bases. I guess this is the place to mention that on the bulletin board of my new dynasty league (hey, check it out in my diary) I set up poster rankings, where depending on how many posts you've made, you get named this or that GM. Anyhoo, to make a short story long, it takes five posts to get labeled Allard Baird, but just one to get libeled as a Jim Bowden. I think that says it all. Jim Bowden is, to me, worse than Allard Baird. Because his ambitions are so much higher.

I think the thing that I've found most frustrating has been his apparent lack of attention to the little things that win....like assembling a bench and making sure you have enough starting pitching to get through the season.  The Nats lacked pitching at the high minors and had a major league staff made up of pitchers with injury histories...yet, Bowden released Cladio Vargas and Sunny Kim, and traded Zach Day and Tohma Ohka in deals designed to help our offense (which didn't).  When Armas and Drese went down with injuries (and Halama failed), we were left scrambling for starters at the end of the year.  While we got VERY lucky with Carrasco as a starter, Bowden's efforts weakened our pitching overall while our offense did not improve.  Why he did these moves when we had a 2B at AA hitting .400 (Short) and 3 productive OFers is beyond me.

Also, Bowden assembled a horrible bench.  Bennet, Carrol, and Baerga (and Guzman) played amost 2 full season's of below replacement level baseball.

His bench this off season is better, but how many second basemen can we use?  Paying Marlon Anderson that kind of money is not a luxury that this team can afford.  

Does anyone know how he came to be a GM? Was he a former player or scout?

He does make some odd moves...of the high risk, low reward variety. I suspect if Griffey didn't get hurt with the Reds, he would be viewed in a whole different light. To his credit, the Reds seemingly had quite a pipeline of talent coming through their farms system a few years back...some that became true MLs (Dunn) and some that didn't quite work out (Gookster).

Overall, though, he is a below average GM.

I have only one comment, well, really it is a question. How does Bowden keep getting hired?

This is the same as ESPN hiring Steve Phillips as an expert to "break down" trades and free agent signings. What would he know about that?

He isn't the worst general manager around, but Bowden is amazingly bad for someone who has held the job for more than a decade. His main problem is roster churn: he acts like a fantasy GM, constantly shuffling parts in reaction to the emergency of the moment. His teams seem to lead the league in number of players used every year. Sometimes the deals work, sometimes they don't, but there is never any evidence of a long-term plan. Trading pitching depth last year for short-term injury replacements is a great example.

Bowden is not as bad as many here suggest.  Certainly has his share of interesting trades/acquisitions.  Definitely gets the best value out of the waiver wire/minor league free agent pickups.  Tends to focus more on hitting than pitching, and unfortunately, too much on the all speed/no stick type hitters.  I could have sworn that was Bowden, not O'Brien, making a trade for Tony Womack.

The trades Jose Guillen for Aaron Harang deal was made 2 days after Bowden was fired.  As was the Aaron Boone for Brandon Claussen deal.  The asst GM that made those deals provided the only two good starters in the Reds rotation.  Dan O'B then signed the FA duds Milton, Ortiz, and Wilson.  

I disagree with the negative comments regarding the Jose Guillen deal.  Guillen was in Cincinnati on a 1-yr deal as the 4th OFer.  He received a lot of playing time with all the injuries and was already complaining about playing time when the 3 starters were healthy.  He also was in the midst of a career year, never seeing above 800 OPS before.  With Wily Mo Pena being forced onto the active roster the following year, Guillen was a definite sell high candidate.  And, as someone else pointed out, Harang is coming off a very good season.  

Back to Bowden: I would also like to point out the 7/8th of the Reds projected starting lineup was either drafted or acquired via trade during Bowden's tenure:

C - Larue - drafted 5th round 1995
1B - Dunn - drafted 2nd round 1998
SS - Lopez - received in trade for Elmer Dessens
3B - Encarnacion - received in trade for Rob Bell
LF - Pena - received in trade for D. Henson
CF - Griffey - received in trade for Cameron, etal
RF - Kearns - drafted 1st round 1998