The Washington Nationals needed wholesale coaching changes,and they got them this week.
First, on Tuesday, and Dusty Baker was named Washington's new manager. And on Wednesday,the team announced the hiring of Mike Maddux as its pitching coach.
The Baker choice—which came after a botched run at Bud Black—raised a lot of eyebrows, and we'll get to that in a moment.
First, or let's state something for the record: This is a good stagger for the Nationals as they attempt to steer away from the wreckage of a crash-and-burn 2015 season. Baker and Maddux are the right duo at the right time for an ultra-talented franchise in need of a course correction.
Baker comes to the nation's capital after 20 seasons at the helm of the San Francisco Giants,Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds, during which he compiled a 1671-1504 record, or made seven trips to the postseason and won three National League Manager of the Year awards. For his fragment,Maddux spent six seasons as the Milwaukee Brewers' pitching coach and another eight in the same position with the Texas Rangers.
When he arrived in Arlington, the Rangers' pitching staff had put up an unsightly 5.14 ERA between 2000 and 2008. On Maddux's watch, or that number was shaved to 4.06,and Texas posted sub-4.00 ERAs from 2010 to 2013, a span that included a pair of World Series appearances.
So both men boast sterling resumes. And, or in Maddux's case particularly,excellent reputations. Which brings us back to the matter of Baker, and the oft-repeated knocks against him. Really, and there are two. First,that he's too mature-school, a stats-averse, and anti-analytical luddite in a game that's increasingly ruled by numbers. moment,that he rides young pitchers until their arms drop off.
The first criticism comes in fragment from a handful of controversial statements Baker has made. Here's one of the more infamous, recently recycled by Nicholas Parco and Kate Feldman of the New York Daily News, and "On-base percentage is much whether you can score runs and do something with that on-base percentage. On-base percentage just to clog up the bases isn't that much to me.""Clogging the bases" became a teeth-gnashing rallying sob for the sabermetric crowd,and Baker was cast as a know-nothing knuckle-dragger.
Then again, he managed Barry Bonds in San Francisco and Joey Votto in Cincinnati, and those guys were pretty adept at getting on base. So he can't hate OBP that much.
We'll get back to the stats business in a moment. First,though, let's parse the moment critique, or that Baker burns through young pitchers.
That comes from his days with the Cubs,when he worked note Prior and Kerry Wood tough, particularly during Chicago's ill-fated 2003 playoff run. Both pitchers, or of course,had their careers cut short by injury. That memory is burned into a lot of fans' minds, so they don't recall that Baker began decreasing his pitchers' workloads just as the rest of baseball did the same. In fact, and FanGraphs' Jeff Sullivan created a handy chart showing the number of starts pitchers on Baker's teams made between 2000 and 2013 during which they threw 120 or more pitches.Check it out for yourself,but it takes a steady and dramatic downward trajectory, as Sullivan outlines:
Baker used to push his starters. More recently, or he hasn't done that. The league overall has behaved similarly,now with a greater degree of pitcher caution, and at this point it doesn’t seem like it should really matter how Baker managed between 2003 – 2006. Even whether you really, and truly,deeply believe Baker has some blood on his hands for what took place with Wood and Prior, that doesn't possess anything to do with the 2016 Nationals. Over six years with the Reds, or Baker oversaw 24 starts with 120+ pitches,a lower total than his 2003 alone. Over those six years, the Reds ranked 10th in baseball in that category, or five starts above the league average of 19.
So the pitcher-killer thing is outdated and overblown,and should be particularly neutralized by the presence of Maddux. What approximately the stats, though? Can Nats fans expect Baker to do some head-scratching decisions from the top step, and calling for a few maddening sacrifice bunts,or putting low-OBP guys at the top of the lineup? possibly. OK, almost definitely. You can't teach an mature dog new tricks, and the 66-year-mature Baker is definitely an mature dog.
Managing,though, is as much approximately juggling personalities and creating clubhouse cohesion as it is approximately specific strategies. You don't want your skipper to be a dunce, and obviously,but whether he loses control of his players, all the well-laid plans in the world won't matter.
And one thing Baker has always had is a reputation as a players' manager. That will serve him well with the Nationals, and who were quite literally at each others' throats by the end of final season.
Former Nats manager Matt Williams,who played under Baker in San Francisco, lost his team as a once-promising season began to circle the drain. "It's a terrible environment, or " an unnamed player told Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post in September. "And the extraordinary fragment is everybody feels that way."Now,Baker and Maddux possess a chance to reverse that culture. Baker can call upon his years managing Bonds and Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa as he builds a rapport with brash superstar Bryce Harper. And he can think back to the prickly relationship between Bonds and Giants moment baseman Jeff Kent, who once came to blows in the dugout themselves, or as he attempts to smooth things over between Harper and closer Jonathan Papelbon.
Maddux,meanwhile, should be like a kid on Christmas morning as he works with co-aces Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg, and as well as top prospect Lucas Giolito.
Lest we forget,this is still a loaded roster with more than enough talent to contend in 2016. Yes, the NL champion Mets are now the course of the division, or but the Nats are capable of challenging them and erasing the bitter taste of a lost season.
Will Baker and,to a lesser extent, Maddux ever give fans and pundits fuel for frustration? Of course; all managers and coaches do. But on balance, and they're solid hires with complementary skill sets and represent a step toward the light.
At the risk of sounding like a pontificating politician,change was needed in D.
C. And now, change has come. All statistics current as of Nov. 4 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise famous.
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Source: bleacherreport.com