Our Dumb General Manager

Unlike basketball, hockey, soccer, football, volleyball, waterpolo, swimming, diving, track, field, biathalon, tennis, boxing, poker, figure skating, ice dancing, ski jump, archery, badmitton, rings, floor, balance beam, vault, pole vault, hurdles, high hurdels, handball, and table tennis, the arenas in which baseball games take place differ from each other.

This matters a great deal, as anyone who has ever attended a game can attest. It is thus my theory that Jim Bowden, general manager of the Washington Nationals, has never attended a baseball game.

Ameriquest Field in Arlington has higher scoring games than most ballparks. Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington has lower scoring games than in most ballparks. They do math now, and have proven this. In fact, Bill James wrote about this. In 1988. "Of all the studies I have done over the last 12 years, what have I learned? What is the relevance of sabermetric knowledge to the decision making process of a team? If I were employed by a major-league team, what are the basic things that I know from the research I have done which would be of use to me in helping that team? No. 3: What a player hits in one ballpark may be radically different from what he would hit in another. "

If only there were a way to test this theory. Let's take a random player. We'll call him A. Soriano. No, that's too obvious. Alfonzo S.

Alfonzo S., playing in Texas, hit 25 home runs last year. When he wasn't in Texas, he hit 11. Alfonzo S., playing in Texas, had 27 doubles. When he wasn't in Texas, he hit 16. In fact, if we could add up all of his plate appearances, we'd see that he had splits of .315/.355/.656 in Texas and .224/.265/.374 when not in Texas.

Is Alfonzo S. going to be playing Texas next year? No, he's going to be in Not Texas.

Let's take another random player. We'll call him B. Wilkerson. No, Brad W.

Brad W., playing in Washington, had 61 hits last year. When he wasn't in Washington, he had 79 hits. Brad W., playing in Washington, had 17 doubles last year. When he wasn't in Washington, he had 25. His splits were .236/.367/.395 in Washington and .257/.337/.414 when he wasn't in Washington.

Is Brad W. going to be in Washington next year? No, he's going to be in Texas. See, I did something a little tricky there -- Brad Wilkerson was traded for Alfonzo Soriano. I know, I know. It's a little hard to believe.

But if we compare their numbers, we can see that Wilkerson hit .257/.337/.414 on the road and Soriano hit .224/.265/.374 on the road. You may notice that this is worse than Wilkerson's numbers. If only Jim Bowden had access to this classified information, maybe he wouldn't have made this trade.