LOVERRO: After Crow flies, Nationals can’t afford illusion

The Washington Nationals’ brain trust put on quite a show in the interview room on draft day last year as the team was outside losing another game.

The club hung a banner made just for the occasion, above which were placed poster-sized photos of the Nats’ three most recent top picks - Ryan Zimmerman, Chris Marrero, Ross Detwiler.

Here’s what I wrote at the time:

“Next year on this day, we can likely expect to see a photo of the Nationals’ No. 1 draft choice Thursday - highly touted Aaron Crow, a 21-year-old right-hander out of the University of Missouri.”

Wrong again.

There will be no photo of Aaron Crow behind the Nationals’ decision-makers Tuesday as they talk about their picks in the 2009 draft.

In one of the worst crimes disgraced former general manager Jim Bowden and the Lerner family committed against fans in this town, the Nationals failed to sign Crow, their No. 1 pick, for what at the mid-August deadline amounted to about a $500,000 difference.

Two days before that deadline, Bowden was talking tough about the moment that arrives Tuesday.

“Our scouting department is not going to complain if we walk into next year’s draft and get two picks in the top 10,” Bowden said at the time. “That won’t be a complaint. … We hope to sign Crow. We’re going to work hard to sign Crow. But it is good to know that at the end of the day, if you don’t do it, you’re still going to get two of the top 10 next year.”

Well, now they have just that - two picks in the top 10.

It’s not quite as clean as Bowden predicted, though.

For one thing, Crow, the ninth pick last year, has enhanced his stature with scouts while pitching for the independent Fort Worth Cats. He now could wind up as high as the second pick Tuesday, so he may have been the real deal.

And Bowden failed to mention this detail: If the Nationals fail to sign the compensation pick, designated “9B,” they got in this year’s draft for not signing Crow last year, that draft pick is lost for good. There is no rollover compensation for 2010.

How’s that for leverage for whoever represents 9B?

Maybe the Nationals will hang a picture of Bowden wearing his Manny Ramirez wig with the caption, “You won’t have to negotiate with this man anymore.”

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