Haven't seen much positivity on the hire around these parts. Warmly welcome Mr. Baker to the clubhouse and to our wonderful city.
Dusty Baker Philosophy is Complete Games. Mark Prior, Kerry Wood, Carlos Zambrano, Matt Clement, Ryan Dempster Kyle Farnsworth Really worried about his strategy over the years of overusing Pitchers, and getting them injured.
I love the idea of usage for the sp. I hope we go old school because I want our best stuff on the mound longer. Our time is now. That said, without Cole we obviously Won’t be as dominate unless Whitley shines. These guys can handle the usage. I believe that.
He's cool as a cucumber and should have an excellent presence in the locker room. Should be able to have a good grip on the players in handling the media/hecklers during this tough situation.
mess true early in his career, not so much lately he is a smart man, will lean on Strom a lot pitching wise wasn’t who I would have chosen but he is an Astro now so I’m all in with him
Indeed. Dusty Baker's soul time traveling from two decades ago would indeed be worrisome to the cosmic balance.
Forrest Whitley can be a young Josh Beckett. Hope he becomes the 3rd Starter. Lance McCullers becomes the 4th Starter.
I'm interested enough in this choice that it will probably get me to watch some games this year to see the effect he has on the batters. I'm not worried about the pitchers. Under Strom, they've carried the team the past two years. What I got tired of was the bats hanging JV and Cole out to dry with zero- and one-run efforts. Maybe an older, more experienced coach will be less tolerant of that. I don't know. But that's the only thing I'm interested in with regards to this upcoming season.
I hope I'm wrong but I'm not really thrilled with this hire. I hope Dusty proves me wrong but I don't have high Hope for him.
I think its a good hire for a year, the Astros need a bridge to a new manager and Dusty fills the need, he wont take any BS from the media and will stick up for the players.......at first I was not happy about it until I heard its a 1 year deal with a team option for year 2
I think you're going to be really disappointed. ALL baseball teams are hot and cold on offense - it's the nature of the sport being so heavily impacted by a single player (opposing pitcher). You just don't watch all the other teams or have the same investment in their players so you don't notice it. Cole and JV led all of baseball in wins last year, so it's not like they were denied an unusual number of wins.
Glad to have a manager with experience in light of the cheating scandals and such. Astros not giving back the ring from 2017 regardless!
The better the pitcher, the more often they have good games spoiled by 0 or 1-run efforts. No offense had less than 8% of their games with 0 or 1 runs scored last season. The Astros scored 0 or 1 runs in 7.5% of JV and Cole's outings. JV and Cole got plenty of run support despite the myth to the contrary. Peacock is the one the offense crapped on last season with over 25% of his starts with getting 0 or 1 run in support. He got 1 run in support total in three straight starts (Cole had 2 all season). No one complains about the crappy run support Peacock got. Edit: Granted, I don't have a Ph.D. in stats so I'm sure the Astros actually scored significantly less often for Cole and Verlander than is actually recorded.
