Baseball Prospectus On The Nats

Woohoo. We're featured again--but the first time as the Nats.

They come around a little bit on Castilla--saying he's not a completely useless player. They also have lil blurbs on Guzman and kick the stadium bill while they can.

The conclude with a question, but they only get the answer half right.

Why hasn't the Washington, D.C. media taken to whipping Bowden yet? Isn't it obvious? It's because they all spent the last two years shilling to get the team to town and now that it's there (or almost there), they are not about to start getting hyper-critical of the opening moves provided by their league-appointed GM. Hell, even the once-great Tom Boswell has turned in his long-ago tattered SABR membership card for a Bowden Bobblehead.

Yes, the shiny new toy factor is pretty big. The writers--as well as many of the readers, I would guess--don't want to hear the team being run down.

But they're also forgetting the media's infatuation with Bowden. He's always been Gammons favorite source. Can you find a Peter Gammons column that doesn't mention him? He clearly loves the rockstar aspects of being GM and the attention it gets him. He clearly loves talking with the reporters and presumably the power it gives him when he passes on information.

There's nothing the media love more than sources. He helps the media out with stories, notes columns, etc, and he receives favorable (or at least less critical) attention.

Combine those two factors, and it'll be a while, before we read something negative about him in the local papers.