Loading ...In our continuing effort to parse every interesting word out of Dusty Baker’s mouth, there’s this, from John Erardi, filling in for John Fay (BTW: Best wishes to John and his family in what sounds like a very tough time.):
When Reds manager Dusty Baker was asked before Tuesday’s game how much weight he gives to a pitcher’s “most recent outing” when it comes to making the team, he turned the question on its head and talked about the hitters.
“(Looking at) ‘most recent outing’ would make you a frontrunner,” Baker said. “And I ain’t no frontrunner. I don’t look at ‘most recent outing.’ If that that was the case, half the guys wouldn’t (make) the team. If that was the case, (Edwin) Encarnacion wouldn’t even be on the team. I look at the baseball card; I look at what I think he might do; I know what he is doing. It’s a combination of things.”
Dusty said that in a funny way, with all that stuff about not being a “frontrunner,” but he understands what everyone should — spring training stats, and even spring training performance itself, should be all but ignored when picking out a roster.
Dammit, what are the odds that in all these years, Dusty has never bought a pack of cards and gotten a Corey Patterson? Clearly, he’s just never seen the back of the guy’s card!
The Encarnacion Fan Club (LOL) at Redleg Nation should like this quote from Encarnacion about Baker:
Baker has chosen a different tact with Encarnacion, offering a reassuring hand while he’s struggled this spring. Often when the two talk, Baker does it in Spanish so his player can understand instruction in his first language.
“Before, nobody talked to me like he’s doing right now,” Encarnacion said. “He’s helped me a lot. He’s talked to me a lot. He’s given me confidence. When you have a manager like that who talks to a player and explains to him how you’re going to do it, you feel great. You feel comfortable. You know you have to play hard always for him and forget about everything else.”
Good stuff, Red. Baker appears to be excellent at that type of thing. Expect big things from EE.
Dusty seems to be very good with communicating with players and it appears they really like being around him (as opposed to some former managers around here).
I think that’s going to be extremely important as young as this team is, if they trust their manager and want to play hard for him they’ll be more confident and I believe that’s what this team needs more than anything because I feel right now they don’t possess much of a winning mentality…let’s hope Dusty can distill that in them.
My impression from afar is that Dusty is still fairly old-fashioned about statistical insight into the game… but he seems to be a great “leader of men.” Maybe the latter really is worth a lot. Who knows.
It actually strikes me that having a great leader as manager and stat guys as advisors could be a great combo.