Jim Riggleman, the once and future manager of the Nats, has been named manager of the team. Again. Or, will be today be switching from part time to full time. Or… I don’t know. He never left, they made it permanent. Allegedly. There’s gonna be a news conference today at 2:30 to give the details. You can catch it on 980 am in DC, and probably on some other local outfits. The rumor is the he was named full timey manager for the 2010 season. Whether it goes beyond that, I guess we’ll find out later. It’s not a surprising choice, but here was something that surprised me, on rotoworld yesterday:
What? Why do I have to hear anything from Bowden? Can’t he go GM the Chiba Latte Marines for 6 years and get out of our hair? It’s not been long enough since I’ve heard from Bowden. Why must he continue to torture us? And why does he have a job in this economy? Sorry, getting a little punchy here. As for Riggleman, well, I was kinda pulling for Bobby V, if just for the attention and craziness it would bring. But maybe that wasn’t the best thing for a young team. Besides, Riggleman’s destruction of young pitchers’ arms may be overstated, and, frankly, I trust Rizzo enough to know what he’s doing. So if he’s confident that his manager has learned from those incidents, I will start that way as well. Other than that, it’s pretty cool to have a local guy as the manager.
But That’s Not All
One thing that has been largely ignored, on the management side, actually has nothing to do with Riggleman or Bowden. Instead, it’s the hiring of Davey Johnson. Johnson, who has been named as a potential manager for every team since 2001. But he hasn’t really wanted to manage full time in the last few years, and has had a few “odd jobs” like managing the Dutch and US national teams.
He was hired previously as a consultant for the Nats under Bowden, and bringing him back in the fold brings in a guy who knows baseball. He is highly respected in the industry, and he’s been around a long time. He was the last player to get a hit off of Sandy Koufax, he managed the Reds to a World Championship, and took the O’s to the playoffs. I don’t want to oversell what he’s gonna do for this team, but he’s a good person to have in the team’s brian trust.