Which MLB NL Managers should and will be fired

With one month left to the season, it is easy to see the teams that have struggled all season and which ones will be considering other managerial options once the season is over. Yesterday, I covered the American League and made my predictions on which AL managers will get fired and which should or should not. Today is the National League's turn. If I believe correctly, we do not have to cover Davey Johnson as unfortunately, at the age of seventy, he is probably going to step down anyway. Here are the rest of those to consider:

Terry Collins - I like Terry Collins. He has learned from past mistakes as a manager and has been a kinder, gentler version of himself as the Mets manager. He passionately cares about his players and they play for him. He has not had the talent to be competitive. But I like where the pitching has gone under him and how he got the most out of a really bad bullpen. But...despite the lack of talent, he will probably go by the wayside. Because that is how baseball works. Will not be back. Should be back.

Mike Redmond - Redmond has not had a lot of fun in his first season. The Marlins were totally bankrupted for talent after the team purged all its higher priced talent. They had the worst offense in the National League and finished dead last in average, on-base percentage and slugging. Mike Stanton did not explode onto the scene and struck out far too often. Young Jose Fernandez has been the only bright light in the entire season. Does Redmond get any of the blame for this? He should not. The team is slightly behind their Pythagorean win-loss record, but that is not much to sneeze at nor is a smoking gun. There seems to be no harm in bringing Redmond back. But it is hard to know what the owner will do here. Should be kept. 50/50.

Ron Roenicke - It is hard to know what to make of Roenicke's situation. His three years have seen diminished returns since his brilliant first year there in 2011. He has had the Ryan Braun mess and has never had a bullpen he can count on. This year, the rotation was continually in flux. But they have been pesky late in the season and if they continue to play well and act as the spoilers and beat their NL Central rivals somewhat regularly for the rest of the season, he might survive to fight another day. The Brewers have some nice pieces but have some large holes to fill. I think Roenicke survives. Stays. Should.

Dusty Baker - I threw Baker in here in case the Reds do not win the division and end up losing the wildcard game. If that happens, with the talent the team has and the window not seized, Baker might be the blame and be a consideration. He is alternatively loved and hated by Reds' fans who see flaws like not trusting young players and some on-field decisions. If the Reds falter, this could be interesting. Probably stays. Probably shouldn't.

Dale Sveum - I felt at the time Sveum was hired that is was a bad choice. I felt that Ryne Sandburg and paid his dues and deserved the nod. And Sveum's Cubs have done nothing to change my mind. The team is four games under their Pythagorean win-loss record based on their run differential and not only that, but their young players like Starlin Castro, Darwin Barney and Anthony Rizzo have not only not improved but in most cases, regressed. Add in some of Castro's off-field behavior and the lack of any team response and I think Sveum should be out the door. Whether he is or not remains to be seen. Shouldn't stay. 50/50.

Walt Weiss - I don't know if anyone can win as a manager with the Rockies. As long as they play baseball a mile high, they will never pitch as well as they need to pitch. They did pitch somewhat better, but the offense never really gelled into the juggernaut they have been in the past. Plus, the Rockies leadership is such a mess that it seems impossible to blame Weiss. If anything, he has hardly been noticeable and if no news is good news, then his presence must be good news. His chances at surviving seem to be 50/50 but I do not see any reason he should lose his job.

Bud Black - Now that new ownership is in place, you have to wonder if Bud Black will survive in San Diego. The team might want to set up their own shop and that might not be good for their current manager. The Padres are four games better than their run differential says they should be and that is good on Black. But you would think that a team managed by a former pitching coach would be better at pitching. Their staff was pretty much a disaster this season. The offense made some strides, but not nearly enough. The lack of pitching progress might be seen as a dagger on Black. I think he should probably keep his job, but I don't think the odds are good that he will.

Bruce Bochy - I get the feeling from many blog writers that cover the Giants that the team won two World Series titles despite their manager and not because of him. And both titles were followed by relatively stinky seasons. They play so far away from where I live that I do not know what to think of him. I would say that a manager who has won two titles in his last four seasons is probably about as safe as a bad team's manager can be.

I am not a real fan of Kirk Gibson and the whole Diamondback rah rah, scrappy vibe. I think it is overdone. But I think Gibson will be managing that team for a long time because of the organization he manages for.

It is time to embrace Dusty Baker

Dusty Baker has been a punching bag for manager-bashers for years. It started with his decade as the manager of the Giants where he coddled and cowed to Barry Bonds while ultimately failing in all three of his post seasons there. Then he was considered the guy who threw away the careers of Mark Prior and Kerry Wood during his run with the Cubs and helped create the misanthrope by the name of Carlos Zambrano. Baker has always run afoul of history and critics when it came to his managerial skills. The taunts crested since he took over the Cincinnati Reds. But perhaps it is time to reconsider all this negativity and take a fresher look at Dusty Baker as a manager.

His tenure with the Red started well enough. In his third season at the helm of that team and after steady improvement, the Reds won the National League Central Division and went to the post season for the first time since 1995. But all of that was negated when the Reds faced the Phillies in the first round of the playoffs in 2010 and Halladay pitched a no-hitter and the Reds were overwhelmed in the series three games to none.

And besides, it was Walt Jocketty who got the credit for building the team after coming to the front office via the Cardinals. And then the Reds could not get out of their own way in 2011. After winning the division, the team could not win back to back games that entire season to save themselves. Bronson Arroyo had a homer-prone season for the ages. The team was out of rhythm the entire season and Baker received his share of the blame.

An admission here is needed. This site run by this Fan has not been kind to Baker over the years either. Much energy here was bent on a mission to get the man fired earlier this season. And then a funny thing happened. Baker's team ran away with their division this season and finished tied for the best record in the National League. But surely the Reds would crumble again in the playoffs against those magical Giants and that pitching staff that won the World Series back in 2010. Oops. That didn't happen either.

So two straight Reds' mauling of the Giants this weekend coupled with that amazing season sort of left this naysayer sucking wind. Whose your daddy now, Fan?

Agreed. It is time to embrace Dusty Baker. It is time to give him his due as a manager his team rallies around and enjoys playing for. It is time to realize that he has managed winners in all three of his managerial stops. It is time to wonder if at least part of the anti-Baker meme is at least unconsciously racist. The guy has a .525 winning percentage as a manager. He was a Bartman foul popup and costly error of doing the unthinkable and getting the Cubs to the World Series.

But what about that pitcher-killer reputation? Well, here we are a decade removed from his years with the Cubs and there is still no consensus about the effect on innings on young pitchers. Some of the same writers who bashed Baker for killing Prior and Wood were this season crucifying the Nationals for shutting down Strasburg.

And Baker wasn't alone in that Cubs situation. He had a pitching coach there and medical people and advisers and a general manager. And in fairness, how the heck do we know how healthy those two pitchers would have been had they been coddled like Strasburg has been? We just don't know. We'll never know.

And Bonds was a force of nature. Would any other manager have been able to handle him any better in those years with the Giants? Bonds was bigger than the Giants at that time. When that happens and when an ego is as big as Bonds' was, what could any manager have done differently?

So yeah, we've been bashing Dusty Baker for years. He has never been given any credit for his managerial career. And perhaps it is time for that to end. He has won the Manager of the Year Award three times. He has won nearly 1,600 games as a manager in his 19 seasons doing the job. And that came after a very good nineteen year playing career. That is 38 years of quality service in Major League Baseball. That is quite awesome when you think about it.

It is time to embrace Dusty Baker as one of the treasures of this baseball era. This Fan will be the first one to admit he has done the man wrong. The Reds, despite their 2-0 advantage currently over the Giants, might not lead to a championship. But that does not even matter in the end. What matters is that Dusty Baker has been worthy of our respect and it is way past time he started receiving it.

The Reds are Dusty

You know how you avoid bending over so that your underwear does not show? Writing about baseball can be like that. Topics are sometimes avoided because of fear you will look either biased or uninformed and neither is a comfortable place to be. In this particular space, posts about the Cincinnati Reds have been particularly avoided and it is not because the team is disliked. On the contrary, Cincinnati is a great baseball town with a rich baseball history. Some of the players there are favorites like Joey Votto, Brandon Phillips and Mike Leake. To be honest, the Reds have been avoided because of bias about their manager, Dusty Baker.

No, it is not Baker's skin color that causes the bias. This space should not even exist if that were the case. The bias goes back to personally blaming Baker for the demise of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior during Baker's tenure with the Cubs. Those two pitchers should have been the dynamic duo for a decade. And like most biases, this one is not even logical because we simply do not know if Wood and Prior would have developed the injuries they did no matter how they were used by Baker. But they were hurt under his watch and care and he is held responsible.

And it is not like those two were isolated instances. There was Bill Swift and Jeff Brantley and others that were never the same after perceived overwork under Baker's watch. There is also the perception here that he hasn't been able to close the deal. In his eighteen years as a manager, his teams have won a grand total of one National League pennant and no World Series titles. His record in the post season is 17-22 including the Reds' colossal blowout at the hands of the Phillies in 2010.

But big picture, Dusty Baker has had success as a manager. His teams have a .521 winning percentage and all of his teams combined have finished in first place in the division four times. That is not a bad record. He managed Barry Bonds for ten seasons and lived to tell about it (if he so chose). So, there's that. And it cannot be forgotten that he was a very good baseball player in his day as well. This bias has to be dealt with because the Reds are still a factor in the NL Central this coming season and his team cannot continue to be avoided like they are contagious or something.

It is time to "man up" about this particular bias. Now that it is out in the open, it can be dealt with. Baseball Prospectus predicts the Reds will win slightly few games than the Cardinals in 2012. With such a close race predicted in the NL Central this coming season, that race will need attention. And a lot of Baker's decisions will be important if every game counts in that divisional battle. It all starts with how his rotation will start the season as he has seven pitchers vying for the five spots. The season will be fascinating and this space and its readers have been shortchanged by a bias that simply has no good reason for existence. 

Coming to Terms With Dusty Baker

No, this isn't a post about how much money Dusty Baker is going to make this year. This is a post about long-term perceptions about a man and his managerial record. Those perceptions were smug and happy when Baker's teams were not performing well. But then we are confronted with a Reds team in 2010 that defied all the projections and won their division over the almighty St. Louis Cardinals. The season left Baker just one vote shy of winning this year's Manager of the Year Award that went to Bud Black (a man who Baker once managed). After such a season, it's time to confront the stereotypes about Baker and take a closer look.

One place to start is his record. Johnnie B. Baker has now managed a total of seventeen years in the majors. Four of those seasons (or nearly 25%) resulted in his team leading the division. Six other times, his teams finished in second place. In one of those seasons (1993, his first) his team won 103 games and did not make the playoffs (no wild card then). The team that won the NL West that year was the Braves...an east coast team. Yeah, it was weird. Another time his team came in second, his team won the NL pennant after getting into the playoffs via the wild card. He has won the Manager of the Year Award three times (1993, 1997 and 2000). He has a .522 career winning percentage. That's a pretty good resume.

Baker managed the Giants for ten years. Only two of those years were not competitive. Every other year, the Giants came in first or second. He then moved on to the Cubs where they won their division the first year he arrived. That was the Cubs team that came within a Bartman of going to the World Series. Up until that season and during it, the perception of Baker was all good. But unlike San Francisco, where he had sustained success, after the Bartman series, the Cubs went downhill and every remaining year that Baker was there was worse than the year before. The Cubs won 89 games in 2004 and then 79 and then 66. When things go sour at Wrigley, things go sour. Just ask Lou Piniella.

It was those last two years in Chicago that the perception turned sour. And to be frank, the Fan is mostly talking about himself, but the Fan isn't alone. Baker became reviled in Chicago. The fall from grace after his initial season led to his reputation that he ruined young pitchers. The reputation is at least partly earned. Prior, Wood and Clement all pitched over 200 innings as young men in 2003. None of the three would ever be the same. It may be argued that he did the same thing to Shawn Estes in 1997 and Bill Swift in 1993.

Estes is a particularly gruesome story. Estes only logged 70 major league innings in 1996. He was really young at the time. In 1997, he pitched over 200 innings despite walking 100 batters. Think about that for a second. Estes had never pitched that many innings before and despite pitching behind most of that year, he won 19 games with a 3.19 ERA. If you look at his game log, almost every single game featured him throwing 110 or more or 120 or more pitches. Estes never again had a year as good as 1997.

Bill Swift pitched mostly in relief up until 1992. He saved 17 games in 1991. He was converted to a starter in 1992 and pitched 164 innings, a jump of 70 innings from the year before, but still reasonable. 1993 was Baker's first year with the Giants and as mentioned, they won 103 games and fought for the pennant down until the final day of the season only to fall one short. Swift jumped to 232 innings that season. He was never the same pitcher again.

All that said, Baker didn't manage in a vacuum. He had bosses who could have made him take care of his pitchers. The whole idea of gradually breaking pitchers in was just beginning in the late 1990s. Baker came from another era. His GMs didn't stop him from giving young pitchers so many innings. His pitching coaches didn't. But the damage was done. What happened to Prior, Wood and Clement combined with the Cubs slide permanently scarred Baker.

That's why it was surprising to this observer when the Reds hired him in 2008. Unlike the Cubs experience, each year has gone a little better for the Reds since Baker's been there culminating of course with the division title. He hasn't overused anybody. He handled Leake just right in this writer's humble opinion. The same with Wood.

There are other good things to say about Baker's run with the Reds. He's put Votto, Bruce and Stubbs out there every day and let them develop into great ball players. He handled his bullpen really well including changing Arthur Rhodes from a one batter specialist to a set up man when it warranted the big left hander. Rhodes had another incredible season.

Dusty Baker cannot be denied his 2010 season. There is nothing to point at to say he didn't manage it well. The big thing now is how the team will do in the coming seasons. Baker had a lot go right in 2010. Scott Rolen had his best year in a long time. His two catchers had career years. Votto blossomed. Bruce blossomed. The team just seemed to gel. It would be difficult to imagine some of those players doing as well in 2011 as they did in 2010.

But it really doesn't matter. This writer needed to come to terms with Dusty Baker as a manager. As usual, a manager gets too much credit when things go well and too much blame when they go bad. But Baker and the Reds didn't win the division in a fluky way. They did it the old fashioned way. They earned it.