Valentine to the Nats?

That’s the speculation from Jon Heyman anyway:

Manny Acta appears to be on his way out as Nationals manager, and while respected ex-big league manager Jim Riggleman reportedly will be installed as the interim manager, team higher-ups also have begun internal discussions about permanent candidates. One of those candidates to replace Acta, according to National League sources, is Bobby Valentine, who is currently in his seventh season as manager of the Chiba Lotte Mariners in Japan.

I think Valentine is as good a candidate as any, and to be sure, his contract situation with Chiba Lotte is such that he is probably looking for a Major League offer. But please, can someone tell me what “National League sources” are? If it’s someone on the Nats, that could be news, but presumably Heyman would say a “Nationals source” if he had one. Isn’t anyone else in the National League speculating just like anyone else?


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Aaron Moreno
14 years ago

The source is anyone who’s seen Bobby V. angle for a new gig in the States for most of the past decade.

Wooden U. Lykteneau
14 years ago

Maybe it *is* a Nationals source, but he felt like “major-league source” would be too much of a stretch.

Joao
14 years ago

It could be someone from the Nats who didn’t feel comfortable being quoted as a Nationals source (there would be, how many, maybe 3-4 people within the organization who know about the Valentine possibility) or it could be someone from an NL who has worked with Valentine and was called by the Nats to discuss Valentine.

bjones
14 years ago

While it’s been 26 years since my father stopped writing for SI, I can clearly remember him grumbling about idiotic changes made to his stories by fact checkers and editors.  It is well within the realm of possibility (especially given the shoddy copy editing I’ve seen in local and national newspapers and magazines as budgets have been slashed in the past few years) that he did in fact write “National’s sources” and someone else mistakenly changed it to “National League sources”.

Michael
14 years ago

Why would Bobby V. want to do this? I mean, the way the Marines ownership has treated him really blows, but you’d think there’d be a better potential MLB job out there than DC. This is a job for a starter manager – at least until the Nats grab 2 or 3 more #1 draft picks.

bjones: If all Heyman’s bad sourcing was due to his editors, he’d have something like $5 million in career-damages lawsuit money due him by now.