Joe Sheehan on Baker's Cubs
Submitted by cubsnet on Tue, 2005-08-30 21:09.
In a premium article, Baseball Prospectus's Joe Sheehan deconstructs the Cubs: "The gap between Cubdom and contention is wide, but so much of it is contained in three Baker mistakes: using Neifi Perez and Corey Patterson atop the lineup, refusing to play his better left fielders, not keeping Rusch in the rotation. . . . In the wake of the 2003 NL Championship Series, in which Baker made a series of bad decisions that cost the Cubs, I wrote: 'The Cubs will never get this close again with Baker as their manager.' I see no reason to back away from that statement." . . . more (sub. req'd)
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Baker is not a guy who deserv
Baker is not a guy who deserves another year as manager, but this stuff about him supposedly misplaying Neifi is absurd. For a good part of the season, Neifi was a key hitter and his glove really helped in the field. In other words, Neifi's been one of the best players on the team this year. Now, if you want to criticize Baker for his mishandling of CF & LF as well as his failure to adequately play the youngsters (esp. Ronnie Cedeno who has been cheated out of contention for the NL Rookie of the Year award by Baker's misanthropy), there's more than ample ammunition for that. However, the fact that he had Neifi starting so often is not one of them.
As for not having Rusch in the rotation, Rusch was already slipping and has continued to slip as a pitcher. You can't blame Rusch's decline in effectiveness on Baker.
Neifi
In other words, Neifi's been one of the best players on the team this year.
Sad, but true.
Ronnie Cedeno who has been cheated out of contention for the NL Rookie of the Year award by Baker's misanthropy),
I must ask: If Neifi is a SS, and Cedeno is a SS, how can you praise Dusty for his handling of the former while criticizing his handling of the latter? The rules only allow one SS at a time.
Now, if you want to blame Hendry for carrying Cedeno on the big league roster for no reason, I'm there with you. I'm determined not to let Hendry get a free pass this offseason; after all, he hired Dusty, too, and the results have been fairly predictable.
2 things: Cedeno did not n
2 things:
Cedeno did not need to be on the big league roster this year.
As for Neifi, he's a pretty versatile player who can play more than just SS pretty well. He could have been platooned in other positions (such as 3B so Ramirez could have been DL'd so he could have recuperated from his ailments) so that Cedeno could have gotten maximum playing time at SS. In other words, Baker could have allowed Cedeno enough playing time to compete for Rookie of the Year while still having Neifi in the field. Additionally, did it really make sense to have Ramierz playing with back problems and whatnot?
RE: Cedeno
I'm not saying the Cubs properly used Cedeno this year, but his status for the Rookie of the Year award is not an example of any misuse. Why would you construct your roster based a player's eligibility for an individual award?
Ramirez
I agree that Ramirez needed more time off than he got, but I would have preferred to have Scott McClain around to give him some extra rest. I don't know about McClain's defense, but he can hit, and it's not like Ramirez is very good defensively, either. They had the perfect role for McClain, but they didn't seem to realize it.
You can get away with playing Neifi at shortstop, or at least you could this year because he had a career year, but he would have been completely unacceptable as a third baseman. His defense is less useful at third than short, and his offense goes from terrible to historically bad (relative to others at the position).
If you really want to get down to brass tacks, what caused this whole mess was their insistence on carrying Macias all year even though he served no purpose whatsoever. He's not good enough to sub for Ramirez, and can't capably back up short. He's deadweight, and having him on the roster prevented them from getting someone who could at least play short if needed instead of needing to have Cedeno around.
Perez & Rusch
the fact that he had Neifi starting so often is not one of them
Sheehan didn't criticize Baker for starting Perez, he criticized Baker for hitting him first or second in the lineup. He simply makes too many outs.
Rusch was already slipping
Rusch was good in his first stint as a starter this year, and has been much less effective in this second go round.
re: Rusch
Charles is right, though. In his last 4 starts (the first time around), Rusch allowed 17 runs in 22.2 IP. He continued that slide during pretty much his entire stint in the pen, allowing at least one run in 9 of 16 appearances, and allowing 13 runs in 19 innings.
Rusch has been altoghether a less effective pitcher this year, and I agree wholeheartedly with Charles in that giving him more time in the rotation would not have helped matters.
Thanks for the additional num
Thanks for the additional numbers. I find Sheehan interesting, but he sometimes seems to not have the full picture (the same, of course, could be said about me; the full picture part, not the interesting part).