You can't fool cold hard stats. Way better offense. Way better at caught stealing. Better team Era Better defensively. Way better frame rate. Better Arm strength Better pop time. Faster. Not giving away games due to passed balls. I mean wtf else is there left? All the rest means squat. Pitchers/staff can take their feels and comfort zone and shove it. This is paramount to starting Shane Battier over a rookie Kevin Durant, and using game planning and knowledge as the reason.
I am not dismissing Baker’s overall knowledge of the game - but the smartest people can have blind spots. He was raised and learned the game in a fundamentally different era, and it shows in his quotes and his decisions. And let’s not pretend every decision Baker has been making was great - playing Straw all first half 2021, for example. His worst decisions have the same pattern - he over plays a certain type of player (defense first, slappy hitter, hard worker … the perfect 80s player). But this isn’t about whether Baker is smart or about his other decisions - it is about whether he is making the right decision here, and he’s not. There is no chance the modern executives in the front office support Diaz having so few starts at catcher - because they look at actual results on the field and there is not one statistic or result that supports Maldonado. Everything else about the last six years, last year’s World Series, what players want, etc is irrelevant to the core discussion of whether Diaz is an upgrade to Maldy at catcher this year. Even the new favorite deflection of “he is playing almost every day, so relax” is wrong - he upgrades the catcher position, where we are the worst in the league, so he should play catcher. That frees up DH for a better hitter than Maldonado, a rest from the field for a veteran, or Brantley. I continue to wait for any relevant argument to the contrary based on something objective that Diaz or Maldonado has done on the field this year.
All hail Dusty for small samples supporting him, making easy decisions, being forced to play Chas over Dubon which if done sooner would have been a bigger impact that Dusty's wise moves, and stopping the Contreras trade.
I should say Baker isn't the worse manager. If he would just play his best position players more than his favorites (or who he perceives to be his best players), he'd be fine as a manager. There would be things I still don't like, but that is the nature of managers. 2023 is easily the year in which who has played the most (when healthy) has not correlated well with who has played the best (only a 12% R2 between fWAR and PAs among mostly healthy players for the Astros this season).
AJ Hinch had a 100% approval rating in 2019. Granted he was managing an all-star team essentially, but he wasn't dumb enough to lead off Jack Mayfield because of his personality.
Blind spots is a good way of putting it. I really don't know how Dusty can watch Chas (well until he was the best player in the game for over a month), Meyers, and Diaz, and think these guys just aren't good enough to play nearly every day when his alternatives are Maldy, Julks, Dubon, and Singleton. Edit: I do hope Singleton turns out to be good and Dubon's biggest problem is how he's used.
Right now, Dusty's biggest issue is that he refuses to see what the team and players ARE doing and continues to make decisions based on the opinions he has had for months. In May, PH Dubon for Meyers would have been an acceptable choice because he was hitting .300 and not striking out. And a well struck single ties the ballgame. He continues to ignore the past 4 months of evidence regarding Diaz or Maldy, and make decisions based on his pre-season opinions, or antiquated ideas that a rookie catcher can't lead a winning team regardless of what he sees with his own eyes whenever Diaz actually does catch.
Meyers was a better hitter than Dubon after April despite Dubon's hot 8 games to start the season. Meyers with one shoulder hit better than Dubon in 2022.
Dubon struck out less than 9% in April and was still under 13.5% on June 1st. He dipped a bit in May but recovered and had a BA of .300 as late as June 11th. (not that BA is a stat I usually use but it's fitting in this situation) He was good for far more than "8 games to start the season" That said he certainly isn't now and that's absolutely not what anyone should expect of him
Excluding the 1st 8 games*, Dubon hit .275 / .308 / .370 in April and May. Meyers was .250 / .294 / .500. A very small difference in OBP, but overall, I would still go with Meyers in all situations outside of a tie game in the 9th and a runner at 3rd if I believed those stats were their true talent level. One should not base decisions on small samples unless it is injury/mechanically driven. When I look at the below graph, the beggining of the year does not look like anything new/improvement. When a player has a hot streak early in the season, their season to date stats usually take a long time to regress. However, there is no reason to throw out previous season data. *My memory was faulty and I miscounted at some point. He had 7 good to amazing games in a 9 game stretch that started with the 2nd series of the season and not opening day. I should have said after April 15th or after his hot 9-game stretch. Even with my mistake, Meyers was a better overall hitter and Dubon would only be a fine alternative if playing to tie in this exact situtation versus playing to win. Without my mistake of not stating precisely when the hot streak was, BA is basically the same with Meyers winning OBP and Slug by a lot from April 16th through May.
Arguing small sample is a fair critique, but it was on the biggest stage. Also not all the decisions he made were easy - especially concerning Gurriel. I am not a big supporter of Baker, especially this season. I believe he has cost the Astros a number of games this season. I didn’t even like his hire. I hope the Astros have a new manager next year. However I am also not going to be dismissive of a man that has been directly involved in baseball for 60 years, has been a manager for a number of years and teams.
I agree If you look back to my original post, I simply said Dusty would have at least had a defensible argument for making that decision in May. Nothing more.
I was for Mancini playing over Gurriel after the trade deadline. Gurriel, Mancini, and Diaz all came in limping into the postseason and Dusty had to pick 2. I don't think picking Gurriel as one of the top 2 of them was hard with Diaz hobbled. He played a ton better than I expected in the postseason, but I did expect a lot more from him than Diaz at that point. I expect most managers would have played Gurriel and Mancini instead of Gurriel and sometimes Mancini/sometimes DIaz in the postseason even with Mancini falling off a cliff. I would have played Vasquez over Maldy last season. Dusty has a lot more baseball knowledge than me. He's a better baseball manager than I would be. I will be dismissive that he has some huge blind spots that I hope most managers would not have if they were in his position. Prior to Dusty, I thought most managers pretty much cancelled themselves out (i.e., within a win or two). Prior to Dusty, Bo Porter was the previous manager that I've had the most issue with, and SIpp in LF and Fowler in CF over Marisnick who he played in LF does not compare to how few PAs Diaz, Chas, and Meyers have so far (i.e., likely a bigger effect than 2 wins).
Dusty is not flipping a coin or throwing dice to make his decisions. He has his beliefs and is strong in them. And they may have been correct and based on sound principles and philosophies years ago, when his baseball IQ was developed. Whatever we think of Dusty he has legitimate reasons for the choices he makes and honestly thinks he is making the right ones. That said, he is simply a dinosaur as far as pregame and in-game decision making. The players love him and the organization likes and respects him. To a man ( and/or woman) they would to to war for him. That said, he is a dinosaur when it comes to game managing. He needs to be retired or given an honorary front office position next season then celebrated as an Astro legend forever.
The front office last year was going to keep Gurriel off the post season roster. The only reason that Gurriel made the post season roster is because Dusty Baker insisted on it. Most managers would not have insisted on Gurriel making the post season and then on top of that, fought the front office and then fought to have him start like Baker did. Was it dumb luck that Gurriel got hot when he did? Maybe, based on his play last season and this season, an easy conclusion is that it is luck - but I don't know for sure. To be clear, I was with you, I wanted Mancini to play last year - but we were wrong. I would have played Vasquez over Maldonado at least half the time as well - it made more sense IMO - but Maldonado was better down the stretch. To be clear I don't agree with Baker on some of the things he does - I don't know why he will have his best fielders DH sometimes, I don't know why he just doesn't seem to like some players (Chas/Yainer/Abreu) and plays others no matter what (Straw/Julks/Maldonado).
That stupid is on the front office. I would expect most managers to have fought the front office on that. Our being wrong on Mancini would still have been the same as Dusty who played Mancini and Diaz in the postseason who posted similar postseason OPS's (sorry if I'm assuming Aledmys looked hurt to you as well). Mancini in the regular season after the trade deadline stunk, but so did Gurriel and Diaz. I was hoping for Gurriel to be replaced. That postseason looks lucky to me, but he should have played due to a lack of other options. At the time, I did not think a Dubon or Meyers should have been starting in the OF with Chas and Tucker. Meyers if he showed his 2021 bat may have changed my mind. That or playing Vasquez at DH were really the only other options that may have caused Gurriel to not start. I liked Vasquez as a catcher.
