Former Reds GM Jim Bowden is once again trying to explain himself. This time after recent acquisition Brian Lawrence came down with a season-ending rotator cuff labrum tear — nine minutes into his first throwing session as a Nat.
“Did we give him an MRI? We did not. That’s our bad,” manager Frank Robinson said. “We chose not to give him an MRI. The physicals should include everything. Why are we giving you a physical? To see if your eyes are gray? No. It’s to see if you are sound.”
General manager Jim Bowden defended the club’s decision.
“It’s expensive to do MRIs on every single transaction,” Bowden said. “In the case of Brian, he had made every single start the last four or five years. We saw him throw a three-hit shutout [in his final start of 2005]. We were trading a player [Castilla] with a bad knee. We felt that there was MRI risk on both sides if the deal was made, and we made a decision not to.”
It can cost several thousand dollars to administer an MRI to a player. But given the millions of dollars clubs hand out to top free agents and first-round draft picks, Robinson said it’s worth the extra cost.
It still blows my mind that teams are willing to throw millions of dollars around (their share of Brian Lawrence , is about $3.0M this year), yet skimp on the most effective diagnostics and preventative medicine. So what if an MRI costs a couple thousand – Lawrence would be making $100k a game, if he didn’t miss a start.
Also: I didn’t even catch Bowden’s idiotic statement the first time — he didn’t order an MRI because he saw Lawrence throw a three-hit shutout last fall?
I’m not going to get on JimBo too much about this one. I’ll be honest when I say I would have jumped all over a deal for Lawrence, and that’s based on what I saw of him three years ago.
Then again, I’m not a real GM.
Yeah, maybe Bowden already knew Lawrence was hurt but would rather say he didn’t know than pull a Dan O’Brien and say he knew and made the deal anyway.
Why don’t we all agree that Bowden has a history of bad acquisitions, and he will keep doing it as long as owners will let him.
“Uh…we didn’t check out his arm because he pitched good one time…when i saw him…it was cool.”
He’s an idiot. Must be nice to have money to throw away!!!