Chicago is a huge sports market with a rabid fan base, long-tenured, traditional teams, and a history of classic sports tales, for better or worse. So, why the hell are Chicagoans still putting up with horseshit writers like Rick Morrissey? In Morrissey’s latest nonsensical column, he defends Dusty Baker, of all people. He’s in quotes, but I hope to God I never have to tell you which writing is Morrissey’s and which is mine.
I can’t tell you how many people came up to me last week and made light of the Reds’ hiring of Dusty Baker. Five? Ten? I lost track after the second joke about the distinct possibility the Cubs would go 15-0 against Cincinnati next season.
ALL TEN people who talk to you made light of Dusty’s hiring? I call bullshit.
The glee that followed the announcement was the kind normally reserved for when the movie villain gets it but good in the end.
“Gets it but good in the end”? Who writes like that? Did you finally finish reading Tom Sawyer?
A Cubs fan on the FireDustyBaker.com Web site said the name now should be changed to Don’tFireDustyBaker.com. Nicely played.
You went on FireDustyBaker.com? Racist.
I don’t recall one person saying the Reds made a good move.
You must have missed the Reds’ press conference.
So I’ll say it: The Reds made a good move. You know, if winning’s your thing.
Especially winning despite total incompetence, mismanagement of a pitching staff, absurd lack of patience for young players, and failure to construct a logical lineup despite trying 150 different ways a season.
It’s interesting how, aside from his odd decision to pull Carlos Zambrano after 85 pitches in Game 1 of the Arizona playoff series, Lou Piniella is regarded as something of a baseball genius for getting 85 victories out of a franchise that won 66 games the season before under Baker.
Yes, that is interesting how Piniella didn’t make needless double-switches, how he had the guts to play young players like Ryan Theriot and Carlos Marmol in lieu of shitty older players like Cesar Izturis and Will Ohman, how he jettisoned fundamentally unsound players like Michael Barrett, and how he improved the team by NINETEEN GAMES in one season, taking them from the laughing stock of the National League to the top of the NL Central. It was interesting watching Piniella depants both Ozzie Guillen and Tony LaRussa. I was so used to watching Dusty stumble around the dugout with his pants puddled around his ankles, I forgot what it was like to actually be on the GOOD side of a strategic move. You’re right, Rick. Until 2007, Cubs baseball hadn’t been interesting since 2004.
Never mind that many believed the Cubs had the most talent, by far, in the National League Central this year.
Yes, which is at least part of the reason that they, you know, won the National League Central.
Never mind that the Cubs spent gobs of money on players for Piniella.
Yes. I’m sure Lou was very appreciative that he was all but forced to trot Jason Marquis out there every fifth day because of his salary. I’m sure Lou could barely sleep for the excitement when Jim Hendry traded for Steve Trachsel. And who could possibly forget the Craig Monroe and Rob Bowen acquisitions!
Or, for that matter, that the Cubs won 88 and 89 games in Baker’s first two seasons at Wrigley Field.
Let’s have some full disclosure here, Rick. The Cubs won 88 games in 2003 with one of the most talented pitching staffs in the National League, and possible all of baseball. The Cubs won ONLY 89 games in 2004 with arguable the most talented team they have had this side of a world war.
Piniella is a savant!
Better than being an idiot.
And Baker, who got his 2003 club closer to the World Series than any Cubs team in almost 60 years, is perceived as a loser, a punch line, chump change.
If the shoe fits.
You still can hear the moaning long after his departure.
He was hired October 13. Your article is dated October 21. Whose fault is that?
Why, why, why didn’t he take Mark Prior out of Game 6 when the Cubs were five outs from going to the World Series? I don’t know. Perhaps it was because Prior was throwing a three-hit shutout going into the eighth inning, and he was the Cubs’ best pitcher. Perhaps it was because setup man Kyle Farnsworth didn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence and Baker liked his chances with a pitcher who had gone 18-6 with a 2.43 earned-run average in the regular season.
Has any Cubs fan ever made this argument? If they have, I’ve never heard it. I wanted Prior to stay in the game, particularly since Prior induced the double-play ground ball that would have gotten him out of the inning. Cubs fans who actually watched the 2003 NLCS, Rick, were bitching more about Baker leaving Prior in during Game TWO, when Baker inexplicably trotted Prior out for the seventh inning with his team leading 12-2 over the Florida Marlins, particularly since Prior had given up back-to-back home runs and a single in the sixth inning. Prior ended the game with a wholly unnecessary 115 pitches. There’s a reason you have shithead players like Dave Veres on your roster. And that reason is so you can throw them out there for 2 innings in utter blowouts. Sure, Veres will give up his 3-4 runs, but you’ll still have a 6-7 run lead, and you won’t unnecessarily waste your stud young pitcher in a blowout.
Why, oh, why didn’t he have starter Carlos Zambrano warming up in the bullpen when the sky fell in that game? Perhaps it was because the sky fell at warp speed. If you were in the ballpark that night, you know how quickly things fell apart. And if you’re a follower of this sad franchise, you know the sense of inevitability that settled in at Wrigley Field with Moises Alou’s glove-throwing incident. It was over before it was over.
If I had a guess, I would say the reason Zambrano wasn’t warming up is because he was terrible toward the end of the year and during the postseason, possibly because his 22-year-old arm was a wee bit tired from throwing 214 innings.
It has become gospel that Baker ruined Prior and Kerry Wood. Wood was injuries, plural, waiting to happen, and nothing before or since Baker’s arrival can change that simple truth. Prior’s situation is a bit more complex. The piling on of Baker began when Prior sat out the first two months of the 2004 season … with Achilles’ tendinitis.
No, the piling on of Baker began when he trotted Prior back out to the mound at Wrigley Field AFTER somersaulting over Marcus Giles and landing on his shoulder on a hot summer day. That’s a negligent use of company resources, and Baker deserves blame for that. Wood had injuries before, so Dusty should be blameless in his abuse of Wood? That’s the stupidest argument I’ve ever heard. Shouldn’t Dusty, with full knowledge of Wood’s history of injury, treat him more carefully than he would treat a pitcher with no history of arm problems?
That’s not to say Baker was innocent of overpitching Prior and causing chronic arm problems. It’s to say I don’t know. Nobody knows.
We all know, actually. And we’re all laughing at your clueless ass.
One study that analyzed pitchers from 2000 to 2006 showed that Baker’s starters averaged 3.68 pitches per start more than they would have been expected to throw under certain conditions. This was based on innings, hits, strikeouts, walks, the particular season, the particular league and a lot of stuff I never understood in math class.
In other words, Baker was not a pitcher killer.
You’re right. You didn’t understand math class.
The beginnings of Prior’s shoulder injury could have come at Southern California, in the minors or in the big leagues under Baker. Again, nobody knows. But that hasn’t stopped fans and media members, many of them newly minted experts in biomechanics and kinesiology, from blaming Baker for Prior’s undoing.
It also hasn’t stopped morons like you from being apologists for Baker when he clearly misused a young, “can’t-miss” pitcher with perfect mechanics.
That the Cubs fell apart in 2006 was more an indictment of general manager Jim Hendry than it was Baker. Even though Wood and Prior had proved to be medically unreliable, the Cubs didn’t respond by signing or trading for other starters. They sat still.
Finally, I agree. Hendry was at least as blameworthy as Baker for the 2006 debacle, and if one of the other teams in the NL Central is idiotic enough to hire Hendry, I will laugh and make snarky comments about them, too.
History is a tricky business. You might have noticed that the past tends to fade. Things you thought happened didn’t, and things that did happen are forgotten. Some themes emerge, and all the elbow grease in the world can’t make them go away. In Chicago, Baker’s theme is one of abject failure.
True. I can barely remember the last time the Cubs won a World Series.
It might come as a surprise to you that in 13 seasons as a manager, he went to the playoffs four times and finished second in his division six other times.
Not really. You see, I actually did my research before Baker was hired, even though I didn’t have a professional interest in doing so. In the course of that research, I also noticed a guy named “Bonds” who played for Baker all those years. Ever heard of him?
He was not guiltless here. He put too much faith in veterans who didn’t deserve faith. Loyalty is one thing; loyalty to a LaTroy Hawkins is insanity.
And Neifi Perez. And Jose Macias. And Lenny Harris. And Tom Goodwin. And Shawn Estes. And Mike Remlinger.
He let Sammy Sosa be Sammy Sosa, Moises Alou be Moises Alou and Kent Mercker be Kent Mercker. Enabling never looked quite so ugly.
Good thing he was brought in because he “managed such a good clubhouse” all those year. I barely even remember those images of Barry Bonds and Jeff Kent beating the ever-loving shit out of each other in the dugout.
When the Cubs finally did everyone a favor by letting those players walk, they forgot to bring in honest-to-goodness major-league talent as replacements. And when Derrek Lee went down with a broken wrist in 2006 and Todd Walker had to play first base, well, you wonder what Piniella could have done with that.
Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that Todd Walker “had to” play first. Also, John Mabry got 38 starts at first. Walker got 35. Good argument, Richard.
We need heroes and we need baddies. That’s life. Baker has taken on epic evil proportions in this town. The descent from good to evil has been dizzying.
Simplistic idiots like you see things as “good” and “evil.” I don’t think Baker is an evil human being. Tinkerbell would have never loaned him pixie dust in 2003 if he were evil. I just think he’s an imbecile who is incapable of managing a video game baseball team, not to mention a Major League team.
Now he will run a team that hits well.
Like the 2004 Cubs should have?
It’s a team with a decent mix of veterans and young players.
Read: sit down, young players. It’s time for the veterans to play.
Oh, that’s right. The rap is that Baker doesn’t like young players. Wait, didn’t second-year pro Matt Murton hit .297 as a regular in 2006? You remember Murton, don’t you? Whatever became of him?
He put up almost the exact same numbers in 2007 under Piniella. Wait, what are you asking? Are you proposing that Murton should have started over Soriano (fat chance), Jones (I’d have loved to see Murton play center field), or Floyd (brought in to be one of the few power lefty bats in the lineup)?
Baker gets a chance to start over in Cincinnati, a town with people who are nervous after reading some of the fiction about their new manager.
Are you talking about “The Fantastical Delusions of Johnnie B. Baker“? Because those were mostly real quotes from the press conference.
How about giving him a chance, Reds fans? You might even win a few games from those mighty, mighty Cubs.
Yeah, and someday you might make us forget about Mike Royko.
zambrano in game 6?? he was gassed after throwing 115 picthes in game 5. who they hell is he hearing these arguments from because they clearly know nothing about baseball
“One study that analyzed pitchers from 2000 to 2006 showed that Baker’s starters averaged 3.68 pitches per start more than they would have been expected to throw under certain conditions.”
What in the fuck are the “certain conditions”? If you certainly want to damage your pitching staff?
Also, I want to kill every fucking idiot who claims that the Cubs spent so much money in the off season like it was a big change in payroll. The morons act like our payroll was $300 million this year.
# Opening Day payrolls for 25-man roster
(salaries plus pro-rated signing bonuses):
* 2007: $ 99,670,332 *
* 2006: $ 94,424,499
The * by 2007 is the 3 million we payed Glendon. Wow, that 5 million was worth 17 wins.
Nice post. Morrissey and Mariotti are like the Ray Fontenot/George Frazier of local sports journalism. The dynamic duo of total crapola.
I don’t think a manager is really “worth wins” to his team in the way that sportswriters in general seem to think. It’s more like a manager’s job is to try to handle the clubhouse and not fuck anything up too badly. A good manager is someone who, like Sweet Lou, usually manages to minimize the negatives and weaknesses on a roster and doesn’t do anything catastrophically stupid strategically. Dusty, by pretty much any standards you want to use, fails miserably on both counts. In fact he goes one better–by blocking the progress of talented young players and ruining the arms of young pitchers, he manages to not only cost the team games but also deeply mutilate the team at an organizational level. Winning 80+ games the year after a Baker scorched earth regime is a goddamn miracle. Lou DID have a more talented team to work with than did Baker in his last year, but that’s mostly because Baker had already completely wrecked the team from the previous seasons. Moz’s argument is like overhearing a Tri Delt bitching at a kegger about how she totally isn’t spoiled because after she wrecked the BMW her dad bought her, he would only buy her a Passat as a replacement.
Hate to confuse Rick with facts, but the 1984 Cubs were one out away from the World Series.
One.
Fucking.
Out.
My bad. there was one out and the score was tied.
Of course, I admit when I’m wrong. Morrissey blows syphillitic donkey dong.
This whole Morrissey “column” was shit, but what was he blathering on about not having Carlos warming up in game six? He just pitched game five. The guy who should have been warming up was game four winner Matt Clement, who had two days rest and would not be needed for another week should the Cubs have actually won. But Clement asked to not go to the bullpen saying he “wouldn’t be comfortable.”
The next night, Josh Beckett threw a basket full of zeroes at the Cubs on two days rest, coming out of the bullpen.
Clement can’t say he didn’t know where the bullpen was, since he was always looking at it while he was pitching.
A real manager would have kicked his sorry ass down there and used him to get a couple of outs in the eighth. You don’t think Lou would have? That’s the difference, Ricky.
Um. To put what I was rambling about above a little more succinctly:
I think that with the team Baker had in his last season with the Cubs, Lou maybe only wins a few more games. But with the team Baker took to the playoffs, because he minimizes mistakes and doesn’t see it as his God given duty to devastate young pitching prospects, Lou might have taken us to the World Series.
Alternately, had Dusty been given the squad Lou took to the post-season this year, Zambrano’s arm would have given out sometime around his 60th start and we’d have Bobby Bonilla and Rusty Staub playing in an innovative warm weather/cold weather platoon in right field.
If anybody can shut this asshole up for good, it’s me. So, you know, there’s hope.
The 8th inning of game 6? I would have been warming up the guy with the 2.63 ERA(2nd best on the team) and 1.05 WHIP. You know him as Sweaty Joe, and he had only closed the door 34 times that year. But God forbid you use your closer in the 8th inning…
“If I had a guess, I would say the reason Zambrano wasn’t warming up is because he was terrible toward the end of the year and during the postseason, possibly because his 22-year-old arm was a wee bit tired from throwing 214 innings.”
Not to mention the innings he pitched in winter Ball before the season began. That was the last time Big Z was allowed to pitch winter ball and as you’ve no doubt noticed, he hasn’t pulled the same kind of fade as he did in 03.
My big complaint with Dusty is and always has been the use of the bullpen in those final two games of the 03 playoffs. Matt Clement may have had his apnties in a bunch about coming in from the bullpen and Zambrano may have been gassed. My personal feelign is that Dusty B was holding Clement back to start Game 1 of the World Series and using Clement the way the master, Jack McKeon, used Beckett in that series, would have fucked up Dusty’s WS plans. Nothing doing there. Plus, he compounded that mistake by using Remlinger and Farnsworth way too much. The Marlins got to see plenty of them and as such, they became ineffective. The worst thing to me was that Juan Cruz was down in the bullpen picking splinters out of his ass for the whole fucking series. I don’t think he even got to warm up.
Maybe that wouldn’t have changed anything. Maybe the Marlins would have lit Cruz up like a Christmas Tree. But maybe they wouldn’t have. You know damn well that if Lou had been managing, he would have used all the weapons at his disposal and not held anyhting back for the World Series. I don’t mind losing, but only if we use everything including the kitchen sink in the process. Dusty didn’t do that and I will never forgive him for that.
And why is it that only the sportswriters seem so focused on Pinella pulling Zambrano? I have yet to hear a serious Cub fan complain about that. did these guys not watch how sick Marmol was from the time of his call up? I’d have put the ball in his hands an inning earlier and pinch hit for Z with Big D-Ward when the bases were loaded with two outs. I have no quarrel with Lou going to Marmol. If you’d have told me he’d give up 2 runs in an inning, I’d have laughed myself stupid. Big Z-Marmol-Howry-(gulp) Dempster usually = W. Sounds like a sound game plan to me. Better than wearing out your starting pitcher and then needing him to come back in a big game. So the big game never happened. They did in 03 and both Wood and Prior couldn’t get the job done. Maybe if they’d had a Pinella keeping an eye on those pitch counts, we’d have won those games. But then again our pen was a mess in 03.
Letter from Dusty to pitchers. Taken from Sportspickle.com:
October 15, 2007
Dear Reds Pitchers –
I am excited to be your new manager! And I am so excited to start the season that I am requiring all of you to show up at spring training tomorrow in Sarasota. If we are to improve our pitching fortunes in 2008, we need to start building up your arm strength NOW!
Tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m. we will begin a throwing regimen of 100 pitches, full-speed. Then we will break for lunch, which will be followed by another round of 100 pitches. I plan to push you to your limits when the season starts, so the time to get strong begins right away.
I’ll see you tomorrow morning! Oh, and it should be a little chilly down in Sarasota. Don’t worry, black and Latino players – I won’t hold your poor performances against you. You can’t help it.
Sincerely,
Dusty Baker
P.S. – Last one to blow out his elbow gets a signed pair of my wristbands!
You really don’t need stats to show whether Dusty Baker is a good manager or not. No long term pitcher abuse points or W-L records. Watch the pre-game and check out the lineup he writes up. Then, watch the game and Dusty’s subsequent moves in the game. Finally, listen to Dusty’s postgame comments on the game. All you really need to realize Dusty is a complete fucking idiot.
I go to a lunch every year before the season starts where Jim Hendry is the featured speaker. He usually spouts a lot of bullshit but in 2004 he made a very candid comment that he thought Dusty should have gone to Farnsworth in the 8th inning of game 6. Evidently Farnsworth was throwing bullets as he warmed up and was a raging sea of Mountain Dew and testosterone. The thinking was that if nothing else he would have scared the shit out of the Marlins.
I love how the hacks keep pointing to Lou pulling Z early like Zambrano had a lead in Game One. I would bet if Zambrano has a lead, he stays in that game. It was 1-1 when he was pulled, and the Cubs didn’t score a run after he left. How exactly does Rick propose they win that game, no matter WHAT Lou did?
Amen BK. Amen. As if leaving Zambrano in the game would have exerted some sort of weird voodoo charm on the offense. That’s why I personally would ahve pulled Z the inning before that and pinch hit when the bases were loaded. You’ve got a tie game and a chance to bust it open and at that point, you beleive your bullpen is damn near bulletproof. even so, Z can hit pretty good and he was in the zone. So Lou roled the dice and got burned. It happens. Sportswriters are idiots.
Exactly, Jack. Not pinch-hitting Z would have made for a better argument, although Zambrano was one of the only guys who squared up the ball in that series. There’s nothing wrong with questioning Lou’s decisions, but to point to one of those decisions and essentially argue that Lou is no better than Dusty because of it is downright lunacy.
Well, Carlos WAS the one of the Cubs only hitters in Game 1.
How dare you mention my name in the same entry as Rick Morrisey’s, Kerm. That puss-brained dumbass isn’t fit to hold my shot glass.
The fact that they harp on that one move just bugs the shit out of me, BK. We lost that series because we didn’t hit and in the final 2 games, we got outpitched. TR Lilly apparently channeled Carlos Zambrano’s repressed demons and blew himself up. Then Hill had a shaky outing, following his pattern for the season. He had a good outing in Cinncinati, so it just followed logic that he would be bad in Chicago. Games 1 and 2 they pitched well enough to keep us in it, but the offense went to sleep. Simple as that. Pinella couldn’t swing the lumber for them, so I refuse to crucify him for a move I don’t even consider questionable.
Actually, that should be Games 1 and 3 they pitched well enough to keep us in it. Game 2 was a complete freaking disaster.
This would all be very interesting if the Reds had anyone other than Aaron Harang, Griffey, and Brandon Phillips that was actually good (I’m assuming that Dunn gets snapped up by a richer team). Though I haven’t seen Homer Bailey pitch, so maybe he’s better than his stats. If he is, he doesn’t stand much of a chance under Dusty’s tutelage.
As it is, Dusty’s already got his “Dude, I don’t know, dude, I don’t have enough players, bro”, “Dude, we need more black dudes for those day games” and “Dude, those injuries are bad, dude, when Griffey goes down, who you gonna play, dude” excuse all lined up.
I’ve got a couple of words for that dude: Paranoid. Racist. Enabler. Pussy. Overpaid, talentless windbag. Coward. Dipshit. Bootlicker. Hollow Quasi-spiritualist. Hypocrite. Spineless, gutless, and brainless. Dillweed. Hippie. Name-dropper. Out of his depth. Excuse-maker. And worst of all: Loser.
Rick Morrissey says, “You forgot ‘evil’!”
I still don’t get why the Reds hired him. Brenly interviewed for the job. The interim manager they have interviewed for the job. They could have invited Joe Torre to interview if they’d waited a fricking week. Not to say Torre would touch the Reds with a ten foot pole, but damn. THere’s also whomever loses out on the Yankme gig to consider. Not to mention the plethora of bench and base coaches who know the game better than Dusty. Hell, Glenallen Hill is a base coach for Colorado. Why not wait and interview him? He’d probably make a better manager than Dusty. Cinncinati is mainly young kids and Dusty is allergic to young kids. Shit, Griffey and Dunn can’t play all the positions on the field. If I were Harang, Bailey, and company, I’d be contacting my lawyers to see if they can insure their arms. I’d also be calling wood and Prior to see which surgeon is tops. They’ll also need to order a shit load of towels with the reds logo on them. Rehabbing pitchers don’t get baseballs, boys. Speaking of which, did the towel drill die with Baker? Has Larry dropped it from his act or did it just become less visible? One wonders.
I think Larry still uses it. This guy makes a good argument as to why the towel drill is so insanely stupid.
Can’t we dump Larry and rehire Fergie Jenkins? would that be too much to ask? You know Fergie’s too much of a man to have his boys playing with towels.
Good article by the way, BK. My doubts about the towel drill are well confirmed. How do you develp a feel for the ball/seams, etc when holding a limp cloth towel? Obviously, you don’t. I especially like the allusion to other spoerts NOT using such a thing as a towel drill. Very nice.
Thanks, Jack. I will say that we should probably take that towel drill article with a grain of salt, since it seems like that guy is pimping his own technique by slamming what everyone else is doing. I like his point, though, that it makes no sense to learn “release point” from it, since you never actually release the towel.
That’s how many we improved from 06 to 07.
Way to go Kermit, your whole argument is ruined!!
Just kidding, of course.
Holy God I suck worse than Morrissey at math. Thanks. Fixed.