During the 2025 Nationals 20th anniversary season the team focused much of their attention on the 2012-2019 seasons — for good reason, that was when the team enjoyed their great period of success book-ended by two of their three most magical seasons. That third season was 2005, baseball had returned to DC and we had a team that started out 50-31, behind a pretty good bunch of starters and one heck of a good bullpen.
The men who brought us that first season in 2005 were GM Jim Bowden and manager Frank Robinson. And Robinson unfortunately isn’t with us anymore, but his name is a permanent part of the Nationals Park Ring of Honor. Nowadays, Bowden covers MLB for the Athletic and is on MLB Network Radio, but he was nowhere to be seen during the Nats 20-year celebration. It sure would have been nice to have him back in town, sitting in the MASN booth, talking about those first days of baseball back in Washington.
Thinking about Bowden’s place in Nationals history leads to an interesting question: Are the Nationals that Paul Toboni and Anirudh Kilambi inherited better positioned to rebuild than the 2009 team that Mike Rizzo took over? Rizzo’s team made the playoffs in his fourth season with him calling the shots — but he was also set-up with Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper in consecutive drafts of “sure thing” 1-of-1 picks. And Bowden’s tanking of that 2008 team set-up the team to take Strasburg and indirectly Harper in the following year.
Will the new guys at the top have similar success, with the next playoff run in 2029? Sooner? Later? Let’s take a look to compare where we stand now vs then:
Roster:
Starting with the players, the 2009 Nationals had nine players in the organization who went on to contribute to the 2012 playoff team, for a whopping 49% of the 2012 team WAR: Ryan Zimmerman 3.9, Jordan Zimmermann 5.5, Ian Desmond 3.4, Danny Espinosa 2.6, Tyler Clippard .5, Sean Burnett 1.7, Ross Detwiler 1.9, Craig Stammen 2.1, and Roger Bernadina 1.0. The entire 2025 team had a combined WAR that was barely half of just those nine guys. Many of the current roster will get better, but many of them won’t be here in 2029 (or whenever this team climbs back into the post-season). Too early to tell, but the guys that Bowden left in place were a pretty good base to start with.
Draft Picks:
This one is an easy comparison, in 2009 the Nats had the #1 overall pick, with a slam dunk no-doubt choice, and the #10 pick (Drew Storen) as a bonus. In 2026, we have the 11th pick. It will take one heck of a draft from the new braintrust to beat the contributions that Stephen Strasburg and Storen made to that playoff run three years later.
Manager and Staff:
Another easy one, both the manager and general manager of the 2012 playoff team were hired by Bowden. Manny Acta was the manager in 2009, but the team already had Davey Johnson in the organization. (DJ needs to be in the Hall of Fame.) I don’t really expect any of Rizzo’s hires to be leading the team into the next playoff run, but who knows, maybe Mike DeBartolo and Sean Doolittle will make it happen.
Payroll and Budget:
In both 2009 and 2026 the new GMs took over teams with low payrolls. Not great for the fan base, but really really great for a General Manager looking to quickly overhaul the team. In 2009 there was only $30 million committed beyond the current season, which was mostly for Cristian Guzman who was good enough to return Tanner Roark in trade. Going into 2025, there was about $70 million committed beyond the current season, almost entirely dead money. Rizzo had a slightly better situation, with an absolute minimal amount of guaranteed money already tied up, but the bigger question is whether Toboni/Kilambi will get the approval to increase payroll by over 50% in four years as Rizzo did.
The table below shows the annual and cumulative payroll increases per year starting in 2009, along with the projected payroll if ownership approves the same level of increases. It sure would be nice for the Lerner family to provide Toboni and Kilami with similar financial backing.
Conclusion
The clear verdict, as I see it, is that the players, draft picks, coaching staff, and payroll that Rizzo inherited were far better than what he left behind. The real question then becomes whether Toboni and Kilambi can replicate Rizzo’s success. Besting the 2009 win total of 59 games should be easy, besting the 2012 total of 98 will be the much bigger challenge, but can they beat the four season cumulative total of 306 wins?
Jim Bowden’s Legacy
Looking back at the Bowden years it was the time of terrible teams and fans “just glad to have baseball back” as the team was owned until mid-2006 by MLB not the Lerners. MLB didn’t allow Bowden to spend money. Bowden’s legacy in DC is a mixed bag, partially of his own doing, and partially based on the ownership groups he answered to. But he did have some impactful draft picks of Zimmerman and Zimmermann as well as the player development of Desmond and some others. His tanking in 2008 produced the draft pick that turned into Strasburg in 2009 — a no-brainer pick.
The Good
And 2005 started out great, better than great, unbelievably great. Bowden put together a pitching staff that powered the team into that 51-30 first half. Only to be sandbagged by MLB ownership who didn’t want their teams beaten by a team with no actual owner. While other teams in the division hunt were loading up, Bowden was allowed to take on only an extra million in salary for Preston Wilson. Even worse, while every other contender was calling up minor league depth in September, the Nats had MLB imposed “budget restraints”. Bowden was limited to calling up Ryan Zimmerman as he watched the team fall out of the race and plummet to a .500 finish.
From Bill Ladson on 9/1/2005, when the Nats were three games out of the wild card, three freaking games!!!!
Ladson wrote, “Zimmerman is the only player from the Nationals’ farm system that will be called up on Thursday. Budget restraints prevented them from calling up more players. However, Bowden expects more promotions in another week.”
— Bowden said at the time
___________
“We are going to make the best moves we can and watch our budget. The Triple-A team [in New Orleans] plays through Sept. 5. So it may be an advantage to wait a few days, save the money and call up an extra one or two guys rather than call them up right now and limit ourselves.”
And 2006 brought a new ownership group and new hope to DC, they had one heck of a first night. On July 2nd, immediately after closing on the team, the son of the new owner, Mark Lerner, the new team President, Stan Kasten, and Bowden met with the agent for a hotshot international prospect. They met in a local restaurant and negotiated until last call, walking away with their new star player, the infamous Smiley Gonzalez. That night marked the beginning of the Lerner ownership and the beginning of the end of Bowden’s time as GM.
Bowden had his moments of brilliance, the trade for Alfonso Soriano brought in a guy who went a historic 40-40 in 2006, along with 20 outfield assists after reluctantly being moved from his favored spot at second base. Bowden made possibly the two best draft picks in team history, the Brothers Zimm. Ryan Zimmerman was the first ever pick by the Nats and was able to contribute to the team the same season as he was drafted (I keep waiting for that to happen again). Jordan Zimmermann was maybe the best pick this team has ever made outside of the first round, later throwing the team’s first no-hitter.
The Bad
Unfortunately, those moves were overshadowed by teams that struggled on and off the field, as the Nats got progressively worse during his reign. In addition to fielding losing teams, those teams were filled with guys that were awfully hard to root for. Many of the players came in with bad reputations, and worse, guys like Dmitri Young and Elijah Dukes had allegations of domestic violence. To top it off, Bowden got himself a DUI, fitting right in with many of the players he signed.
It got so bad there was a popular blog called Fire Jim Bowden that got quite a following. Bowden even lost the support of Screech’s Best Friend, the ever present Nats320 blogger who never had a cross word about anyone in the organization fired off this screed: https://nats320.blogspot.com/2006/08/my-take-on-jimbo.html
And the Ugly
Bowden’s time in DC came to a sudden ending in spring of 2009. The Washington Post led the charge to have him fired over allegations of kick-backs in the Smiley Gonzalez age fraud scandal. There was even an FBI investigation. Bowden was never charged, but the media firestorm was unrelenting. My belief was that if the Lerners had any inkling that Bowden had cheated them they would have fired him before spring training, but in the end Bowden resigned for the good of the team.
“I am disappointed by the media reports regarding investigations into any of my professional activities. There have been no charges made, and there has been no indication that parties have found any wrongdoing on my part. My resignation is based upon my realization that my ability to properly represent the Washington Nationals has been compromised because of false allegations contained in the press.”
— Bowden’s parting words as he left the team heading into the 2009 season:
“I will also carry with me the cold hard realization that my life has been turned upside down by a news media that prints entire stories attributed solely to anonymous sources who refuse to be identified and who are free to allege anything they choose for any purpose without fear of retribution.”
Only Bowden knows what really happened. The shockwaves from his resignation were felt throughout baseball, and within the fanbase. The transition in the front office came from the inside with a promotion of Rizzo who reported directly to Kasten.
Legacy Revisited
The question I have from those years was how much was Bowden’s reputation tainted by a mandate to lose games? The team did fine in 2005 when he was trying to win and the team only started losing 100 games a year under the Lerner ownership. I find it humorous that many Nats fans blame Mark Lerner and his brothers-in-law for the low payrolls when it was their father Ted Lerner who invented losing for draft picks. As we know, it worked to perfection in scooping up Strasburg, Harper, and Anthony Rendon in three consecutive drafts, before the team decided to win and signed Jayson Werth to a 9-figure contract prior to the 2011 season.
“The Plan” was never officially acknowledged — but tanking while possibly profiting from keeping payrolls low was the team strategy in those early years. So how can the GM be blamed for fielding crappy teams when he was just following his marching orders?
The difference between Bowden’s success in tanking was the quality of the draft picks and the quality of taking non-first round picks like Desi and JZim and turning them into All-Stars as homegrown drafted players. Rizzo’s Rebuild 2.0 hasn’t produced superstars, as of yet, from the draft like Strasburg, Harper and Rendon. We are still waiting on Brady House, Elijah Green, Dylan Crews, Seaver King, and Eli Willits to produce as superstars — all Top-10 picks, and to be fair, we have to give them more time, right?
Back in 2012 I asked Bowden if the team had intentionally tanked. He responded via a private message:
Hopefully this does not blow some non-disclosure contract. (Do those have expiration dates?) Heck, we all knew it as part of the Stan Kasten “plan.” In any case, it is long overdue for Bowden to come back to DC and talk about his time here. In particular, the transition from Montreal and that first year at RFK. So much information from that time frame has been lost off of the internet. I would really enjoy hearing him sit down with some of the Nats podcasters and tell his story of the return of baseball to DC.
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