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.