... find cheap, relatively decent pitchers.  He is good at finding the Pete
Schoureks, Pete Harnischses, Jeff Brantleys, Paul Wilsons and Esteban
Loaizas, whom everybody forgot about after injuries or a bad season or two,
but who can still contribute.  He was even smart enough to trade one of them,
Denny Neagle, and get Bret Boone back.

As good as he is at that, though, he is equally bad at getting any pitcher
who is any better than decent.  The Reds have not had one truly good starting
pitcher since Jose Rijo's arm exploded.  In 1994.  That is just a travesty.
 I don't care what payroll constraints you're under.  That's completely
unacceptable, not to even come up with one consistently good starter, through
trade or the farm system or free agency or any way at all, in ten years.
 There is no way any team could ever win like that.

The points made about Ryan's inability to get anything accomplished with a
surplus of OF apply even more so to Bowden, who had four potential All-Star
OF and a mediocre 1B, and apparently liked it that way.  In fact, until this
year (when Bowden was gone) there was a lot more talk about getting rid of
Dunn, Kearns or Pena than getting rid of Casey, which would have been crazy.
 The whole situation was ridiculous, especially when, again, they had no
pitching and a trade here really could have helped.

Let's also remember that part of the GM's job is hiring the manager.  Bowden
fired a great one in Davey Johnson, and hired the below-average Bob Boone and
the godawful Ray Knight.  Although Bowden did identify one good manager in
Jack McKeon, his record in this area is weak overall.  if I'm not mistaken,
MLB hired Frank Robinson, not him.

His trading record is actually ok; that's not the main problem with him.  He
got Konerko for Shaw, Pena for Drew Henson, J. Guillen for J. Rivera,
Taubensee and Hal Morris for nothing.  He also has some awful ones like J.
Guillen for Harang and Wilkerson for Soriano.  It was certainly at least
pointless, though not a huge loss, to give up a potentially decent starting
pitcher in order to bring in Wilson for two months and bench Ryan Church,
especially when Church is probably the better player to begin with. I won't
get on Bowden for the Griffey trade, since anyone would have made that
trade... nor will I give him credit for it, though, if only because 1)
Griffey insisted on being traded specifically to Cincinnati, 2) he almost
blew the whole thing by making Pokey Reese "untradeable" and 3) he later
wanted to trade Griffey for Phil Nevin.

Bowden hasn't done many major FA signings, being in small markets, but two of
the most notable ones, Castilla and Guzman, were really bad.  He somewhat
redeemed the Castilla move by trading him for Lawrence.  Guzman is just a
major, major mistake (and not recognizing that he's now a sunk cost is only
compounding the problem.)  He sometimes pulls out a good smaller signing of a
forgotten or injured hitter, like J. Guillen and Ron Gant -- similar to what
he does with pitchers, albeit less often.

Bowden is not the very worst out there, but I definitely don't want him
GM'ing my team.