Reds Interviewing Dusty Baker

by Charlie Wilmoth on Oct 12, 2007 5:20 PM EDT in News

The Reds are interviewing Dusty Baker for their manager's job.

If being terrible is the Reds' goal, and it apparently is, I don't know why they're messing with Baker and Wayne Krivsky. Aren't Larry Bowa and Randy Smith available? Seriously, wouldn't the job Bowa could do alienating all the Reds' best players outweigh the damage Baker will do when he inevitably shreds Homer Bailey's arm? And wouldn't the damage Smith would do by cold-calling Juan Gonzalez and offering him a twelve-year deal outweigh the damage Krivsky does when he trades Austin Kearns for Royce Clayton? Also, I believe Dave Littlefield is still available and would listen if the Reds offered him an assistant GM job. Come on, Reds - if you're going to tank, at least you should really try.

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Competitive Balance

As a Pirates fan, you have to like the way our division rivals' front offices are shaping up. Wade in Houston, Krivsky in Cincy... Chicago can spend their way out of mistakes if they want to, but this is a team that acquired -- intentionally -- Craig Monroe and Jason Kendall for their stretch drive. St. Louis has a vacancy, and from the sound of it, this DeWitt is capable of hiring a fool.

That leaves Milwaukee. From where I sit, we've got no worse than the thrid-best front office in the division, just by Coonington not being buffoons. And that's giving Chicago more credit than they deserve.

by KPatrick on Oct 13, 2007 3:21 PM EDT reply actions

Yost can't manage a bullpen. He overworks guys. He'll put a crappy reliever in a high-leverage situation because said reliever had a good outing in a blowout last week. If there is one single "skill" that I think is valuable to look for in managers and is a way in which a manager can actually affect his team over the course of a season, it's how he uses his bullpen. Look at Arizona: they were able to win 90 games despite being outscored in part because they used their best relievers in the close-and-late and put the crappy relievers in blowouts that just became even bigger blowouts. Yost doesn't appear to understand this.
Yost's players evidently hate him, Weeks and Hall in particular.
He platoons whether there's an advantage to be gained or not...unless you're one of "his guys" (sound familiar????) in which case he will ignore what would be an extremely effective platoon (Jenkins/Mench).
He lets emotion get the better of him at really bad times: coming down the stretch, with the Brewers still alive, the Brewers were down 3-2 to the Cardinals late in a game on 9/27. Yost brings in a crappy pitcher specifically to plunk Pujols to retaliate for Fielder getting hit THE PREVIOUS DAY and then brings in a (surprise!) crappy reliever. Cardinals score four runs in the innings, Brewers lose 7-3. Yost was ejected for the third time in four games, because apparently his idea of "leadership" is to get tossed.

by matskralc on Oct 14, 2007 4:08 PM EDT up reply actions