Lol. We have already seen that if anything is done in advance, the front office was not on board. See comments from Click and Brown regarding playing time the last few years.
He did this in DC and that's why he was let go.... the article is flattering but come postseason... it came to naught. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-does-dusty-baker-rest-his-regulars-so-often/
In 2019... our manager somehow had a 100% approval rating... no one could follow that... https://www.crawfishboxes.com/2019/...prove-of-the-job-a-j-hinch-is-doing-of-course
They’ve been against him resting players? When? Click was adamant that rest recommendations come with discussion with the training staff… and Brown hasn’t said anything regarding resting regulars.
Dusty had Barry Bonds. His Walk and Stolen Base yearly totals are unmatched in today's players. if Bruce Bochy managed Bonds, we woiuld be talking about Bill Belicheat championship totals.
I don't think that multiple star players should have the same days off. They need to be staggered. Yesterday, we all knew the lineup would most likely not score enough to win the game. Despite what is said publicly, Dusty and the Astros do not manage to win every game. They manage to get X number of wins that they feel will result in a World Series championship. Of course they can not say this publicly because most fans would go nuts. It effects ticket purchases and fans spending money. An organization simply won't do anything that hurts their income. The MLB season is a grind. Sometimes resting players can result in overall better results. A large part of these decisions are made by a group of various individuals and scheduled ahead of time. Dusty knows that his job includes accepting the ire and venom of fans when the team loses after stars are rested. However, everyone including Dusty and Dana Brown had to expect the Astros to not score enough runs to win yesterday. On the flip side, the entire 26 man roster should be MLB calibur players. Why have them on the roster if they can't play at an acceptable level. If Dana Brown had been here throughout the offseason and built this roster, then this would be on him as well as other decision makers in the organization. But as it is, he gets more time. Now Dana needs to upgrade the players that are not good enough to play on a championship team. And we can hope that the standings, injuries, and even fan morale forces them to make some adjustments to the day off schedule moving forward.
The whole resting of players should be situational as well. We have been resting players since very early in the season. Why do we need to give players two days off instead of one. I didn’t have a problem with Altuve, because of the injury and you have Dubon who is still producing, but giving Pena 2 days off? Why not give Julks 2 days off and let McCormick get some playing time. Bregman hates days off and we have to give him 2? It is time for Crane to step in and make Maldonado play one out of every 5 games and Julks be DFA’d. Diaz should be your everyday starter at catcher. Until Alvarez gets back, we should be trotting out our best offensive unit possible every game. I think the need for 20 something year old players to get days off is greatly exaggerated. Pitchers are a different matter altogether and I like the 6 man rotation, although I think we need at least one more TOR or MOR to win it this year. Baseball is not a grueling sport. Ninety percent of the time is just standing around.
Lou Gehrig played in over 2,000 straight games and they were travelling around in trains back then. He was MVP in his 4th to last season around about consecutive games 1500 through 1650. I think also that Dusty is still in that Steve Garvey era when guys like that were considered good hitters. Julks is just not any good other than a decent average. I think Dusty truly thinks he's better than Chas when in reality Chas is just a much better hitter. He just looks at the two batting averages.
But Ripken was a shell of himself half way through his career. He didn't have season above 4.1 WAR over his last decade after averaging 7 WAR his first 10. I think 5-10 days off per season throughout and his numbers jump 10% and he is Mt. Rushmore type of player As for Julks, I see his "splash plays" and maybe Dusty sees a lack of this in the team overall? Maybe he feels the the 70% bad results are worth it to get those 30% great plays in there, instead of 40-45% merely good and positive, with 55-60 bad? Like a high strikeout hitter who has light tower power over a fundamentally sound guy who rarely does anthing great, but also rarely strikes out? I'm grasping at straws trying to understand Dusty.
He's easy to understand. He is a hunch manager and doesn't give a flip about stats. He also is extremely stubborn and set in his ways like a lot of us old men.
I hope this thread is still active next year because I think the only way Dusty is offered another one-year contract is if the Astros win the World Series this year. Probably a good chance he retires anyway if the Astros win the World Series. Why does his past keep being brought up? At this point, who cares what he did with other teams. Did you know Abreu was a great player before signing with Houston?? I'll take the word of posters that say his former teams regularly underperformed in the playoffs. These Astros teams have not underperformed in the playoffs despite the heartburn he gives us, so I just care about the track record here. Maybe it'll fall apart this year with how he is frustrating us all with his lineups, etc., but it's still an incomplete.
The worry is that we may not make the playoffs if he keeps giving away games with his stupid lineups and weird pinch hitting decisions.
He doesn't want to stress his team out trying to maintain a winning streak, so the best way to do that is to ensure they never have one.
