Prospectus on Dusty, Reds
John Perrotto has an interesting, if not groundbreaking look at the Reds today (free, I think).
Building something in baseball almost always requires using young players. Baker has taken his share of hits over the years for not having patience with youngsters, but he feels the charge is unwarranted. “It’s not that I don’t like young players,” Baker said. “A lot of years, I never had many quality young players to work with. It’s different here. There are a lot of very good young players in this organization, and many of them are going to have the chance to grow this season and I believe contribute to our team.”
…
“My feeling with young players is that I don’t think you should put them in a position where they are overmatched in the major leagues,” Baker said. “You can ruin a kid that way, and lose him forever. You have to be careful about their confidence level. You have to make sure they can be put into positions where they can succeed.”
Which is why Bruce was sent to Triple-A. While Baker believes Bruce will eventually become a superstar, he thought the 21-year-old was still vulnerable to big league pitching, as he struck out 11 times and walked just once in 43 plate appearances in exhibition play while posting rate statistics of .262/.279/.286.
March 26th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
Is the groundbreaking comment intended to be sarcasm? Baker has been saying these things all spring.
March 26th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Say what you want about Baker and sabermets, teh man has an feel for people. That matters.
March 26th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Greg, I said \”not groundbreaking.\”
March 26th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
And I totally agree with Mark T. Baker seems quite good at one huge part of his job (motivating and inspiring), and remarkably obtuse at a somewhat-smaller part (understanding what skills are important to run-scoring and designing lineups).
We’ll see which part proves to be most important, and how he handles what I consider to be the third key aspect of managing - putting players in situations where they are more likely to succeed.
March 26th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Chris,
You left out the part of the manager’s job Dusty is best at…….communicating. I personally think he is probably the best commuinicator in the sport. Speaks spanish with the latin guys, and probably has read Dale Carnigie…..hopefully it all turns into wins.
March 26th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
That falls under “motivating and inspiring.”
“People skills” is the overarching theme, I suppose.
March 27th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Ah, it was the “if not” that threw me. ie “best, if not one of the best,” but I see that you didn’t enclose it in commas. Reading comprehension issue on my end.
March 27th, 2008 at 9:03 am
I said in an earlier post that I thought Dusty Baker was the PERFECT manager for the 2008 edition of the Cincinnati Reds.
I don’t think Reds fans are quite ready to accept this, but the Reds have their first real chance to win the division in years.
They just need someone to coax out of them their best level of play and banish forever the losing culture that has consumed the organization for years. And Baker’s the right guy for that job, this year.
I really can’t wait for this season to start. And I apologize in advance for the optimism. LOL.
March 27th, 2008 at 11:09 am
i feel for you guys. i helped run a cub blog called 1060west for the last few years, including most of dusty’s tenure. i hope you don’t suffer for baker the way we did, but….
1) dusty cannot manage a pitching staff to save his life. he will latch onto a couple talented starters (his “horses”) and beat them to pieces, refusing to conserve them at all regardless of situation, will not deviate no matter how difficult their workload becomes. he’s no use with a bullpen, which he generally mistrusts. witness the wreckage of kerry wood and mark prior. witness baker riding prior in late 2003 in the NLCS game 6 well past his point of exhaustion.
2) he thinks he hasn’t had good youth talent, but it’s closer to the truth to say that he cannot/will not see talent before it’s well proven — and he’s unwilling to take the chances with his job necessary to see it proven throuhg at-bats and innings. and it won’t matter much how far out you are. believe me, the cubs were out of it frequently. it didn’t help. general management eventually had to intervene in chicago and command him to sit players of the ilk of neifi perez.
3) he is tactically inept. you haven’t seen an undeserving big league manager until you’ve seen dusty screw up a double switch. he does it more often than anyone would believe.
4) he does not understand the concept of on-base percentage. it is not too much to say that he despises the walk. his attachment to patterson (leading off no less!) is testament — “tools” and athleticism impress him, regardless of how poor the ballplayer.
5) team discipline will be non-existent. the cubs under baker were the most petulant, whining, bratty, lazy big league club i’d seen in my couple decades of watching. lots of grandstanding at umpires. clubhouse feuding was taken to a new level. they will further be fundamentally unsound because baker will not drill them. the reversal of these things was the biggest change in the first year under piniella.
at the end of the day, four years in chicago showed us all that his vaunted reputation for “player management” was code for “anything goes” and open coddling of veterans, making sure they hit their contractual playing-time bonuses.
there’s plenty of reason for optimism for this club — i’m excited to see votto, bruce and bailey grow up. but i think you’ll find yourselves succeeding in spite of baker, not because of him. good luck, but i bet you can print this comment out and in two years you’ll agree with everything in it.
March 27th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
It’s not my board and I may get scolded for this, but I’ll say it anyway:
It’s kind of amazing that Dusty Baker is the one with 1000 wins as a manager and not gaius. I mean really, who gives a spit what a Cub fan thinks of Dusty Baker?
I had the pleasure of watching Lou Piniella on a daily basis for about 3 years in Tampa. His teams sucked and they lost a ton of games. Sounds an awful lot like Dusty’s Cub teams.
March 27th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Some of us can think of a pretty good team Lou managed.
March 27th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
And some of us can think of pretty good teams that Baker managed. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that Baker has a better career winning percentage than Piniella, although I’m not going to bother to research that.
But none of that is the point. Look, the Cubs improved 19 games from ‘06-’07. They also added Soriano, Lilly, Marquis, DeRosa and Lee. Also, the Cubs added Marmol to the bullpen, got another 100 innings out of Hill and Marshall took a big step forward. Were they NOT supposed to improve? Seriously, how many games did Piniella win that Baker wouldn’t have? I mean, c’mon!
Cubs fans have 100 years of losing under their belt. I’m surprised they only blame a couple of years on Baker.
And by the way, I remember the ‘90 Reds probably better than most on this board….mostly because I’m older than them, LOL.
March 27th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Then, T.R., you should understand that those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it.
Thanks to g.m. for sharing. Observations from earlier times are valuable. Of course, it has been some time since the Reds had a manager who was tactically adept, so Baker won’t be too different in that aspect from what has gone on recently.
Who was the last tactician we had, Davey Johnson?
March 27th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Red, you were right (#10). No need to bash the other posters.
March 28th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Sorry Chris. Just don’t like Cub fans. Never have.