FanHouse Tony LaCava

Jim Bowden's continued employment is one of the great mysteries of the early spring to me. He's never been a good GM, neither with the Reds nor the Nationals. On top of his spotty track record, he's now got the embarrassing "Not Esmailyn Gonzalez" fiasco to go with some serious concerns about skimming bonuses from Latin American prospects. I mean, if you aren't going to fire a guy for stuff like this, what do you fire him for?

Well, the rumor mill is churning today and it looks like the Nationals may be exploring their options after all. I saw this morning (via Baseball Musings) that the Nationals' blog Federal Baseball reported last night that the Nats were considering replacing Bowden with Tony LaCava, and today Baseball Prospectus' John Perrotto is seemingly confirming those rumors.

So the Seattle Mariners fired general manager Bill Bavasi back in June, yet they still haven't made any ground in figuring out who their next general manager is going to be. They've interviewed four candidates for the job, including Kim Ng who would be the first female general manager in baseball history. Aside from Ng, they've also talked to Arizona's Jerry DiPoto, Toronto's Tony LaCava, and Milwaukee's Jack Zduriencik.

Now there was some speculation that the Mariners would announce their choice today, but at the moment it doesn't look like that's going to happen, which could be a problem once the World Series starts tomorrow night. MLB isn't too fond of major announcements during the World Series.

Of course, if the Mariners want to they can ask Bud Selig for a waiver to allow them to dare interrupt the World Series, and though team President Chuck Armstrong says he isn't sure whether or not he's going to ask, I am. He's not, and the Mariners won't have their general manager before the World Series is over anyway.

The reason for this is because they're waiting for Pat Gillick. Gillick is a former Mariners GM, and he's currently the Phillies general manager. He has made it clear, though, that he'd like to retire at the end of the year. I have no doubt that Seattle's plan is to wait out the Series and then gauge Gillick's interest in returning to Seattle as head of baseball operations, and then having him choose the new general manager.