The great debate over Dusty Baker’s handling of his pitching staff–raised again in a recent Sporting News column–clearly grates on the Cubs’ manager.
Does he wear down his starters by letting them throw 120-plus pitches too often?
Or are his “old school” methods tailor-made for a rotation that features four strong, young starters: Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, Carlos Zambrano and Matt Clement?
Baker sounded off on “baseball gurus” Thursday, and wondered aloud why he’s the target of so much media second-guessing.
“How come people don’t just leave me alone?” Baker said. “Why are they talking [trash] all the time?”
Baker was responding to a piece by Sporting News columnist Ken Rosenthal, who wrote that Baker used up his starters last year and theorized that “fatigue” from too many 120-plus pitch starts was the main reason Prior and Wood lost their respective starts in Games 6 and 7 of the National League Championship Series.
“People have been trying to bring me down for whatever reason,” Baker said. “They say what I can’t do. Very rarely do I hear what I have done. But, actually, that makes me stronger. That’s OK. That’s how it is.”
Baker noted that his pitchers have always had a good track record in terms of staying healthy and that Yankees manager Joe Torre wasn’t criticized for Mariano Rivera’s arm troubles last year.
“Nobody said anything about Mariano Rivera being hurt [after] pitching the eighth and ninth [innings], but that’s what Joe had to do,” Baker said. “Did you ever hear anything about that? Nothing. That’s OK. What are you going to say when I kick somebody’s [butt]?”
Second-guessing managers is as old as baseball itself, and Baker reluctantly conceded that it comes with the territory. In his case, however, he seems to believe it’s excessive, even though he has been one of baseball’s most successful managers with four postseason appearances in 11 seasons and three manager of the year awards.
“People are always trying to find something I didn’t do,” Baker said. “Look around at some staffs, and their pitchers stay hurt. But I don’t hear [anything] about it. Am I right?
“Look around–the same kind of teams have guys stay hurt all the time. You don’t ever hear anything about it. Why doesn’t somebody list their guys who, for whatever reason, have been on the DL or were hurt?”
Baker says the Cubs’ staff should thrive on a heavy workload.
“When you’re young, man, that’s when you work,” he said. “My dad worked two jobs for 36 years. As you get older, you can’t do that. But when you’re young, you have the stamina and the energy to do that. That’s when you do it.”
Baker called it ironic that he was criticized in San Francisco for overusing his bullpen and in Chicago he’s criticized for overusing his starters.
A manager has to go with his strengths, Baker said, and the Giants had plenty of talented relievers while the ’03 Cubs were loaded with talented starters.
“You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” he said. “But you can’t take away the fact that I won.”
Addressing the theory that Prior and Wood were “fatigued” for Games 6 and 7, Baker said “everyone on the field” was tired at that point of the season.
“What would [critics] have said about David Cone, Nolan Ryan and those guys?” he said. “I come from an era when 200 innings was sort of average. What would they have said about Ferguson Jenkins or Bob Gibson or Warren Spahn?
“The reason our guys are throwing 120-125 pitches . . . you look at how many complete games we get out of those 125 pitches. How many complete games did our team or my Giants teams have? I have pitchers who throw a lot of pitches. I have pitchers who strike out people.”
Baker pointed out that Dave Veres and Mike Remlinger were nursing injured arms in the playoffs and Mark Guthrie and Antonio Alfonseca had been ineffective most of the season.
“Who are you going to bring in every day?” he asked. “[Kyle] Farnsworth and [Joe] Borowski every day? That’s all that was left.”
In the end, Baker said, he really doesn’t pay any attention to his critics.
“People are always looking for the negative,” he said. “I’m really tired of people always picking at what I don’t do. There are a whole bunch of [managers] who haven’t done what I have done. I think there are more of those than [managers] who have done better [than me], so I don’t pay any attention.”
