Posts tagged DustyBaker at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

It's one of those things that you don't often see in baseball, but the Reds attempted the old "batting out of turn" trick in their game against the Mets this afternoon. The mistake came from, as these things usually do, out of players being confused after a late game double switch. In this case, David Ross led off the bottom of the ninth with a fly out to right field. But there was one problem, Corey Patterson was due up lead off in the ninth, with Ross batting behind him. So Mets manager Willie Randolph informed the umpires of the mistake, which meant that the out was charged to Patterson, and Ross had to bat again, this time in his correct spot. Ross then singled.

Reds manager Dusty Baker said the batting order was correct on the dugout board and on his scorecard.

"The guys hit out of order, and it's my job to catch that," Baker said. "So I take full responsibility."

Baker said his only other experience with a team batting out of order came when he was a player and he was the one who hit when he wasn't supposed to. When he came up the second time, he hit a three-run homer.

That indeed happened to Baker, as you can see in this boxscore. But Dusty obviously has a short memory, because Baker was actually involved in two other incidents as a manager. Dusty probably doesn't remember the first one, because nobody called him out on it when it happened back in 1998 between Rich Aurilia and Joe Carter. But when Dusty was managing the Cubs back in 2004, there was a pretty intense incident regarding batting out of turn. And oddly enough, it happened against the Reds:

Edinson Volquez threw 118 pitches in going seven innings during yesterday's 9-0 Reds win against the Cubs. At 24, that kind of usage in a game that was safely in hand naturally conjures up memories of the ruined arms of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior. It did for Nick Friedell of Big League Stew, anyway, but I think there's a pretty big difference between the two cases.

118 pitches is a lot, especially since the Reds and their pen are off today, but it's a high for Volquez on the season and, on average, he hasn't been unduly abused in his starts. He's on pace for the neighborhood of 190 innings pitched, well below the marks posted by Wood and Prior under Baker. Additionally, when Baker came to Chicago, Wood already had a history of arm problems and Prior was a neophyte.

Volquez is a new name but he's hardly the owner of an untested right arm. He threw 153 and 178 innings in 2006 and 2007, respectively, so 190 wouldn't be a major jump in usage. In fact, it's right in line with what you'd expect for him. That doesn't mean that Baker won't wind up putting too much stress on his arm, it just means that he hasn't done it yet.

Baker's gotten a lot of scorn in these parts, most of it well deserved, but I just don't see it in this case. He's been fairly judicious with Johnny Cueto as well which seems that Baker's history is creating issues that the present doesn't back up.

Perhaps we're being too hard on Dusty Baker, afterall (you have no idea what kind of personal strength it took me to write that sentence). After Johnny Cueto's disastrous outing yesterday, Dusty's moved quickly to reshuffle his rotation to give his phenom more rest and call up Mario Soto, the team's roving Dominican instructor, to help pitching coach Dick Pole work Cueto through his struggles. From the Cincinnati Enquirer:

"It's based on the last couple of times out," Reds manager Dusty Baker said, "to give him a little more time, to let him collect his thoughts, to let him have an extra bullpen session."

[...]

"I'd like Mario to come in and talk to him," Baker said. "(Pitching coach Dick Pole) is on the case and on the job big-time. But Mario kind of helped raise the young man, helped teach him that changeup."

As someone that's a big fan of good pitching, this is great to see. Cueto's obviously been struggling in his past few outings and it's good to know that if the Reds aren't going to send him down to AAA to work out his struggles, that they're at least moving quickly to get him help and giving him time to work things out.

After two starts, Johnny Cueto was the talk of baseball. Through 13 and 1/3 innings, he'd racked up 18 strikeouts and allowed only six hits and three earned runs with no walks. While watching a Reds' broadcast, I saw him compared to Bob Gibson after two starts at the age of 22. Since those first two starts, he's gotten shelled. He's allowed 18 earned runs in 21 and 2/3 innings with 15 strikeouts and 6 walks, allowing an average of a homer a start. Last night the Cardinals rocked him for six runs in less than two innings. Dusty Baker tries to explain:

"He was getting the ball over the heart of the plate and up," Reds manager Dusty Baker said. "His change-up was up. He'd get two strikes on guys and throw a fastball over the heart of the plate. He was throwing well. He just wasn't locating well."

It's true that no one expected those first two starts to carry across the whole season, but Cueto's currently pitching like a guy that could use some time down in AAA. There's no indication that the Reds are planning that, but they certainly need to be careful with such an impressive young talent.

Ryan Freel has become a bit player for the Reds, seeing most of his time as a defensive replacement or pinch hitter. Why is this? Apparently because of a conversation he allegedly had with Dusty Baker in which he said he wasn't comfortable playing every day. Trouble is, Freel doesn't recall ever having this conversation. From John Fay of the Cincinnati Enquirer:

"It would have stunned a lot of people if they heard what was said about me. Apparently, I said I couldn't play every day to the manager. Apparently, I told him that this offseason. That would have never come out of mouth."

[...] "I talked to Wayne (Krivsky) to tell him I didn't say that," Freel said. "I would never in a million years say that. They gave me a two-year ($7 million) deal. I don't think it was to do this. It's frustrating. I can't explain it. There's a lot going on. It's a shame that I had to address it like this. I didn't want to get the media involved."

Fortunately somebody had the decency to remind Baker that Corey Patterson isn't very good at the game of baseball, but in the meantime Jerry Hairston has been recalled from the minors and taken a lot of the at-bats Freel would normally get, playing anywhere and everywhere on the field. Making matters worse (for Freel, not the Reds) is that Hairston is actually hitting right now (.364 heading into tonight's game), which means Freel will likely continue to be snubbed for the time being.

When Dusty Baker announced his impending reign of terror, he did so with great authority. He mandated that Joey Votto stop looking at so many pitches (even if they were bad) and he immediately sent top prospect and future of the organization Jay Bruce back down to Triple-A. Understandable, certainly, because Dusty had Corey Patterson on his roster.

Yes, by "understandable", I do in fact mean "certifiably and irrationally stupid". Bruce was the consensus number one prospect in all of baseball in 2007 and seemed nearly assured of the starting centerfield job in Cincy. Anyway, I hate to be overtly optimistic, much less to trust the mad (cow disease ridden?) brain of Mr. Baker, but I think there's a pretty good chance we see Bruce back in a Reds uniform within the next few weeks.

Why? Because Corey Patterson stinks, that's why. Yes, he started off hot, but as my good friend Mr. Greber pointed out in a new series of articles today, so did Chris Shelton. Now, he's batting .183 and not clogging up the bases to the tune of a .254 OBP. Congratulations, everyone. (The insane thing is that he has four home runs. Just weird.)

Bruce, meanwhile, is putting up numbers (.333/.348/.561) with three home runs and four stolen bases in just 16 games at Louisville. The best part, Dusty? Only two walks. That's right. You don't even have to tell him to swing more! Look, the point of all this Dusty-dogging and Patterson-bashing isn't to point out how silly the Reds organization was for signing him to coach the team (not entirely anyway).

The point is to tell you, the fantasy owner, what a steal you could be getting on Jay Bruce right now. The kid is a masher, he's ready for the majors and sooner or later, Dusty is going to have to cave and let him on the field at the major league level. You either need to a) pick him up and stash him now or b) make a play for him from another owner before it's too late. Bruce is the future, and if there's anything the Reds should learn from the way Votto, Johnny Cueto and Edison Volquez are currently playing, it's that the future is now.

Corey Patterson is mired in a 1-for-28 slump. Said slump has dropped his line to .186/.258/.475 (hey! look at that slugging percentage!) and he's pretty much been the not-Jay Bruce black hole at the top of the lineup that most Reds' fans feared he would be this year. Unsurprisingly, he got the night off in favor of Ryan Freel tonight. Logic dictates that the benching was due to his slump. Dusty Baker does not play by logic's rules. From Hal McCoy at the Dayton Daily News:

Baker was not aware of Patterson's slump until a writer informed him Sunday.

"Really?" said Baker. "I did not know that. He hasn't been striking out a lot so a long stretch of no hits is not as noticeable as when a guy piles up the strikeouts."

Unless Freel hits for the cycle, drives in four, scores five and makes three stupendous catches, Patterson will soon return. Not Tuesday, though. The Reds face lefthanded Hong-Chih Kuo, so Freel or Norris Hopper will be in center. Or maybe Jerry Hairston, Jr.

Can anyone point me towards a job that pays in the six-to-seven figures per year neighborhood that lets me travel across the country and watch baseball games from great seats without having to really pay that much attention to what's going on on the field? Because honestly, I'd kill for that gig. I swear I'd even notice when my lead off hitter only fails to get a hit over a seven-game span.

Fist-bump: BBTF

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups

Chicago Cubs (7-5) vs. Cincinnati Reds (6-7) - 8:05PM Est.

When Dusty Baker came to Chicago in 2003, he took over a team that was an annual bottom feeder in the NL Central and brought them to within five outs of the World Series. He was a savior. Then, four short years later, Dusty signified everything that was wrong with Cubdom to the team's fans. So he was run out of town in favor of Lou Piniella, and after taking a year off hanging out at ESPN, Dusty got himself a new job in Cincinnati. Now Dusty returns to Wrigley Field for the first time since being fired by the team. There's some question as to what kind of reception he'll receive from Cubs fans, and if I were a betting man, I'd bet my house, your house, and my weird neighbor's house all on "Gets booed like there's no tomorrow." Luckily for Dusty, he has an ace up his sleeve to combat the harsh reception he'll receive, and that ace is Aaron Harang. More importantly than backing up Dusty, the Reds would just like Harang to put an end to the team's current three-game skid. He's at the right place, as Aaron is 4-0 with a 4.65 ERA in eight career starts at Wrigley Field. Ryan Dempster, who is also facing his former team, gets the start for the Cubs, and so far his new/old role as a starter has worked out well. In two starts so far this season, Dempster has a 1-0 record and a very nice 0.69 ERA.

Kerry Wood is, so far, a pretty decent closer. That's good, because that's his exact job description. Closer.

Kerry Wood is not, so far this year, all that great at talking about baseball. Case in point: his analysis of Lou Piniella and Dusty Baker:

Asked the difference between managers Lou Piniella and Dusty Baker, Kerry Wood said they're actually quite similar, pointing to their main character trait.

"They both hate to lose," he said.

I shouldn't get too frothy with Kerry, because I highly doubt this is all he said. He probably snuck in a few more cliches in the hopes of getting the microphone-wielding mongrels out of his grillpiece. But Wood's quote is roughly akin to saying any of the following:

"They're both homosapiens." "They both require h20 to sustain life." "They both manage baseball." "They both, at one point, have managed for the Chicago Cubs with varying levels of success." "They both may or may not have startlingly awkward dog-to-wife hierarchies in their home."

Wait, that's just Dusty. So that's how they're different.

The Reds visit the North Side of Chicago this week, which officially makes it Hate Dusty week in Cubdom. And while that sentiment is probably justified in a lot of ways -- Baker has done plenty to deflect the blame for a pretty bad managerial hash in 2005 and beyond -- some of that is going to get overblown. In other words, all of the ills in Chicago are not Dusty Baker's fault.

Kerry Wood, one of the two pitchers many think Dusty ruined, wants to bury that hatchet:

"I'll be excited to see him," Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood said. "People forget he was the first manager in a long time to have back-to-back winning seasons. Eight years ago, if you would've talked about a guy coming in and turning the organization around and winning in back-to-back seasons, they would've said, 'We'll take it.'

"Obviously, it didn't end the way he wanted it to, and the way we wanted it to end," Wood said. "Dusty puts his heart and soul into whatever team he manages. I think the players understand that, and people around him on a daily basis understand what he puts into the game. I hope [the fans] treat him well."

Kerry might be being a bit too optimistic here. OK, I'm being too kind. Kerry's being way, way too optimistic, because Dusty's probably going to hear the boos all week. Still, here's hoping Cubs fans get it out of their system and focus on the task at hand. The Dusty obsession has to end sometime.

Getting too frothy about lineups is usually folly. For example, Cubs fans and media seem to have a lot of anguish over whether or not Alfonso Soriano hits No. 1 in the lineup or No. 3 or whatever; what most don't realize is that while it's probably a better idea to put Kosuke Fukdome in the top spot for his OBP, the overall season difference is going to be less than a few runs. A few runs are important, but not life or death.

Anyway, all that equivocation aside, lineups are fun to talk about. Dusty Baker's lineups are especially fun to talk about. And guess what: Dusty's lineups actually aren't all that bad.

Reds fans put together a list of preferred lineups over at On Baseball and the Reds, and the post-mathematical conclusions are relatively straightforward: Dusty's lineups aren't much, if at all, worse than most fan lineups. His personnel choices are still questionable -- Corey Patterson is still patrolling center instead of Jay Bruce -- but in terms of optimizing the personnel he's chosen, Dusty seems to be doing a pretty solid job. Who knew?

(HT: THT Live)

This off-season, there were a lot of us on the interwebs that were terrified when Dusty Baker was hired by the Reds to be their manager. Sure, everyone gets a good laugh out of Dusty's "clogging up the bases" comments, but when it comes to things like that he's probably not a whole lot worse than most other managers. What really had us worried was the Reds' surplus of young pitching and Dusty's history with young arms.
Accordingly, you can imagine my surprise when I clicked over to the Cincy Enquirer to see how the Reds' were planning on handling their rotation with all of the extra off-days in April and I read this:

The Reds could slip Fogg in behind Harang. That would also give the Reds' young starters, Johnny Cueto and Edinson Volquez, extra rest.

"We might try to reconfigure to do that," Baker said. "It's not going to hurt Cueto and Volquez to lighten their load early to keep them strong late. They're going to be making 10, 11 more starts minimum – more if we get to the playoffs – than they've ever thrown."

That sounds like a downright reasonable idea. Throw that in with the fact that Johnny Cueto hasn't even thrown 100 pitches in a start, despite his early season dominance and I'm actually starting to think that Dusty may have learned something. Of course, it's still April. Gotta remember that. So long as the Orioles, Royals, and Marlins are in first place, none of this is real, right?

Chicago Cubs fans have a reputation. Can you guess it? I'll give you a second. Yeah yeah -- they're drunken, brutish louts who care less for actual baseball than for the games themselves. They're tolerant. They're affable. They're willing to take losing in stride so long as the sun is out and the beer is cold. It's just a stereotype, of course, but it's at least partially true. (And sometimes, it's hard not to think Cubs fans have things figured out pretty well, in the big scheme.)

Anyway, Dusty Baker's bench coach disagrees. In Chicago, those same fans are just too brutal:

"It's very, very harsh in Chicago," Speier said. "I don't think there's a manager who has been there who hasn't said Chicago, especially the North Side fans and the media, can be brutally harsh and sometimes unfairly harsh. I'll be the first one to say it. I think the media was completely unfair with Dusty. I think it was the media's doing that basically [caused] the change. That's my opinion, not Dusty's."

In case you're counting, the reasons given for Dusty's firing are: 1.) Harshness in Chicago. 2.) North side fans. 3.) The media.

Nowhere in there did I see "Dusty being kinda bad at managing baseball," or "Dusty saying Latin players are better in the sun," or "Dusty thinks WALKS CLOG THE BASES." Nope. The reason Dusty got fired is because Cubs fans -- the same fan base that has, at times, allowed its franchise to be incredibly inept by supporting it no matter what -- are just too brutal. Right. That makes so much sense.

Before the Milwaukee Brewers and Cincinnati Reds played tonight, Tom Hardricourt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel talked to ex-Brewer and current Reds' closer Francisco Cordero about his decision this off-season to leave Milwaukee for Cincy. Cordero essentially told him that the Brewers didn't take him seriously when he said he had another suitor. As a result, Coco is a Red. Knowing that has to give Ned Yost heartburn every time he sees Eric Gagne on the mound.

Tonight, Gagne blew a 2-1 lead in the ninth inning by giving up a home run to Corey Patterson, only to be bailed out by the Brewers' bats again in the tenth inning. That's his second in three chances this year, if you're keeping track at home and if you think the Brewers are going to keep bailing him out and winning these games anyways, well, you're much more of an optimist than I am. In fact, you're much more of an optimist than most sane people.

Relegated to a side note from this game was another solid outing from Johnny Cueto (8 strikeouts and 2 runs in 6 and 1/3 innings tonight, still with no walks), and a bad night for Dusty Baker haters. He pulled Cueto after his 95th pitch in the seventh, even though that 95th pitch resulted in a strikeout of Corey Hart. And of course, Corey Patterson hit a big homer in the 9th. Then again, Dusty probably doesn't care what I think since the Reds lost and all.

There is an incredible story about scouting talent from Reds Insider (via MLB Trade Rumors) that was released yesterday, where John Fay points out that sometimes there's a distinct difference in how various prospects -- particularly in the increasingly global nature of today's baseball world -- arrive to the majors. To make that point, he contrasts how Cincy pulled Edison Volquez and Johnny Cueto.

To get Volquez, the Reds gave up Josh Hamilton, a high price to pay.

To get Cueto, they spent $3,500 and trusted the instincts of a very good scout.

The Reds were looking to fill out their Dominican Summer League roster in March of 2004. Johnny Almaraz, the then-director of international operations, was in the D.R. supervising the process. His scouts were doing most of the signing. But a friend of his from San Pedro de Macoris kept trying to get Almaraz to look at a little right-hander.

'I told him the only way I could do it was on my way to airport,' Almaraz said. 'I told him if he could get a game together at 7 in the morning, I'd watch the kid throw.'

I mean, that's ridiculous. Not only did they land a kid who seems like a can't miss (although we know how that often goes with Dusty Baker in charge) but they pulled off signing him for a measly three thousand five hundred dollars.

As Fay points out, though, general manager Wayne Krivisky is probably going to regret not getting along with Almaraz; the former scout (and obvious eye for talent) moved onto the Braves in the same position after some disputes with the new GM. Yeah the Reds are a serious sleeper team this year, but Krivisky's penchant for middle relievers that don't pan out, managers that destroy youthful arms and an apparent inability to get along with one of the best scouts in his organization doesn't bode very well for the future.