As a long-suffering Cubs fan who’s developed an affection for the Nationals, I am nauseated that Dusty Baker is the team’s new manager. In a season or two, I suspect that fellow Nats fans will share my nausea.
Dusty’s shortcomings go beyond his nearly criminal mistreatment of young arms that he swears he won’t do again, despite the fact that he continues to scoff at the precepts of sabermetrics. The bigger indictment against him is that he strenuously resists using new or young players. History has shown that Baker does not do “player development”; if a rookie doesn’t light up the team from day one he’s not going to be in the mix, and even then he’s wary. A couple of examples help explain my frustration with his managerial predilections.
In Dusty’s first year as a manager, the Cubs had a promising rookie first baseman named Hee Seop Choi who had torn up AAA the year before and was touted by management and all the baseball press as the team’s star of the future. He began 2003 in the lineup and had a good start to the season. In early May, he got injured in a collision and went on the disabled list.
Choi returned to the roster three weeks later, rusty and still a little sore, and had a slow couple of weeks–not disastrous, but below his previous performance. That was all Baker had to see–he buried Choi on the bench and replaced him with the pedestrian Eric Karros. Once it was clear Baker would never play him again, Cubs GM Jim Hendry shipped Choi down to AAA and then traded him for scraps.
In 2007, the team began the season with a hole at shortstop, which was being shared by the light-hitting Cesar Izturis and Ryan Theriot. Meanwhile, at AAA Iowa, the Cubs had Ronny Cedeno, who hit .359 with 10 home runs over the first two months of the season, all but forcing the Cubs to call him up. But being on the team doesn’t mean Baker is going to play someone, and it took a couple weeks after the call up before Cedeno finally got a start. Cedeno stepped up and had a stellar game at the plate, getting four hits in his first four at bats, and with the game on the line in the 9th inning it’s his turn to hit again. In a move worthy of manager C. Montgomery Burns, Baker pinch hit for him, replacing him not with some veteran stick or slugger taking the night off but with the desiccated corpse of Lennie Harris, who was batting under .200. He struck out, the Cubs lost the game, and Cedeno returned to the bench, not getting another at bat for a week. For the rest of the season made only a handful of starts.
During Baker’s tenure with the Chicago Cubs not one rookie position player cracked the starting lineup.
The Nationals may have had a forgettable year in 2015 but there were some reasons for optimism–the emergence of Michael Taylor, signs of brilliance from Trea Turner in his cup of coffee, and the continued solid performance of Anthony Rendon when he returned to health. It’s difficult to conceive that any of these players would have cracked the lineup under Dusty Baker. It’s hard to fathom how Trea Turner will ever get a chance to play shortstop with Dusty around, no matter how explicitly management tells him that he is Ian Desmond’s heir-apparent. And it’s inconceivable that Taylor will get meaningful playing time.
But Dusty didn’t just have a problem with rookies: He has proven himself unable to deal with exceptional players as well. His first comment about Sammy Sosa upon assuming the Cubs’ job was that he needed to steal more bases–after Sosa had hit over 200 home runs in the previous four years. Ultimately, he contributed to Sosa’s deteriorating relationship with the team to the extent that it was all but impossible for him to remain a Cub for the last year of his contract, and the team had to dump him to the Orioles and eat his salary in a year which they dearly needed a power hitter.
In Cincinnati, he had no use for Adam Dunn, who did nothing but hit 40 home runs and regularly get on base, and the team jettisoned him for a song. In the parlance of Baker, he simply “clogged” the bases with his walks, getting in the way of faster players who could come around and score.
While people point to the Cubs’ near World-Series bid in 2003 as evidence of his managerial acumen, a better way to look at it is that he took a team capable of 90 wins and managed it all the way to 88 wins, which was just enough to sneak into the playoffs that year. Steve Bartman’s interference gets blamed for the Cubs failure to get to the world series, but Baker’s refusal to pull an obviously gassed Mark Prior in the 8th inning amounted to professional malpractice. And it’s not fair to hail his 2003 playoff success without also mentioning the team’s late season collapse the following year that saw them blow a playoff berth in the final week of the season, a disaster that can be laid squarely at Baker’s feet. The team never seriously contended again during his tenure.
And don’t get me started on his inability to handle a pitching staff. Matt Williams’ facile approach to the bullpen is like calculus compared to Baker’s approach. Don’t expect Dusty to use his best relievers in high-leverage situations; it’s far beyond his ken.
To be fair, Dusty is good at getting veterans – most of them, anyway – to perform well, and if the Nationals have a one year time horizon and are willing to completely throw away the future for a slim shot at a pennant now then his appointment as manager makes some sense. Since I suspect that Mike Rizzo is fired if the team doesn’t go deep in the playoffs, mortgaging the future for one last run is understandable from his perspective.
But come 2017 the odds are that Trea Turner will be rotting on the bench, Michael Taylor will be starring elsewhere, Bryce Harper will be told to take fewer walks, Stephen Strasburg will have fled D.C. for a team more congenial to pitchers, and the Nats will finish well out of the running.
Meanwhile, the rest of D.C. will come to share my low opinion of Dusty Baker’s managerial abilities.
Ike Brannon is president of Capital Policy Analytics, a consulting firm in Washington.
