Jim Bowden comes down on the Nationals ownership for not wanting to pay managers:

“So, I think the baseball people of the Nationals picked two good guys in Black and Baker, Mike Rizzo I think had it lined up right, but they weren’t willing to pay,” Bowden continued on Tuesday. “And again, we shouldn’t be surprised. Ted Lerner, as owner, walked away from Aaron Crow, a first-round pick, over some dollars. He walked away from Girardi over some dollars. This is a pattern. They made hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate because they know how to negotiate, and by the way, they’re not afraid to walk away and have someone else have the job. If you don’t want to make this, there’s only 30 jobs. You don’t want this? Fine, I’ll get somebody else, because I’m going to pay you ‘X’ and that’s what I think the job is worth.

“Now, it’s hard for me to fathom, when you pay Max Scherzer $210 million and you don’t have enough to pay the manager. They didn’t pay Matt Williams, okay? They didn’t pay Davey Johnson, Jim Riggleman. They don’t want to pay the manager for whatever reason. I don’t quite understand it, but it is what it is. ”

I’m not sure the Lerners are wrong here. In general, people who work in sports don’t get paid very much. There are very few jobs and high demand for them, so teams can afford to pay lower level front office people less than they’d make in other jobs. So if the owners see two or three people they believe are capable of running the team, why not take the one who is willing to take the lowest salary?

Are there really only 30 people who can manage a major league team? It is a tough job. It strikes me that a lot of clubs have not quite figured out all the strengths a person needs to be successful yet, which is why there is so much turnover.