One More Year

The saga of the front-office restructuring continues as Scouting Director Dana Brown was offered a one-year contract extension by Lame Duck GM Jim Bowden.

I'm not sure how (if at all) this relates to yesterday's firing of Adam Wogan, but it's clear that it's also an attempt to fight off any advances from other teams. It had been reported that Omar Minaya, his former boss, was sniffing around, looking to offer him a scouting job with the Mets.

Bowden certainly sings his praises:

"The first thing I did when I came in last November was study all of the reports from all of our scouts," Bowden said. "Dana, by far, stood out among everyone as a premier evaluator. He has a tremendous ability to evaluate amateurs, and a tremendous ability to evaluate pitchers in general."

Bowden got his start as a scout. And Bowden does have a good eye for amateur talent, so that praise does mean something. Unfortunately, Bowden isn't the best at separating the major-league talent from the minor-league talent.