Quote:
Originally Posted by BoofBonser26
Sure. You'd rather have them make a productive out.  |
Fixed, at least to the extent that I can fix the quote but not Dusty Baker's head. FWIW the latest
Hardball Times Annual had a study of which managers have historically done a good job of being there when their players did better than normal career progression would suggest, and Baker was near the top. IOW his ideas may seem to suck to us stat-heads but apparently he gets good results with them.
Another guy who sometimes gets maligned by the stat community who did well on that was Lou Piniella. With Lou, all his goodness was concentrated in hitting; pitchers did about average under him. That's actually pretty on par with what I saw while he was the M's manager in the 90s; he'd say some dumb things sometimes but it seemed like everybody and their grandmother improved their walk rate under him. He was just plain brutal with young pitchers. Mike Hargrove was rated about where I thought he'd be, which was near the bottom. The worst manager at this metric was Art Howe.