Re-Examining One Particular Thing About Dusty Baker

The 2016 season looms as one of the most anticipated years in Cubs history. Rarely has this fanbase ever gone into spring training with more legitimate excitement and hope. However, 2016 also marks the return of Dusty Baker to the managerial ranks. As if to remind us that sometimes, hope is dumb, and it hurts us.

Of the many things Dusty did that drove us crazy during his time with the Cubs, one of the biggest was giving an abundance of playing time to “his guys” on the bench. Most of those guys had a few things in common. They couldn’t get on base. They couldn’t hit for power. And if their Weighted Runs Created-Plus were given physical weight, they would have been Christian Bale in The Machinist.

But in defiance of our pleas, Dusty made sure they got their playing time. If his mantra was “walks clog up the bases,” his solution appeared to be hitters that made us want to drink. Each year, Dusty gave several hundred plate appearances to players like Neifi Perez and Jose Macias. And they responded by putting up the kind of numbers that made you say “I didn’t know Cormac McCarthy wrote baseball stats.”

On the surface, there’s very little reasonable explanation for this tendency. But if we look a little deeper, the idea that led Dusty to play Neifi and Macias so often was sound, even if they themselves were anything but. Here’s what I’m talking about:

When Dusty managed the Cubs, it was hardly a secret that he loved his veterans. His line-ups were driven by names like Sosa, Alou, Garciaparra, Burnitz, and Walker. And the only thing stopping him from adding Hartnett, Tinker, Evers, and Anson was that they’d already been signed by Mr. Burns.

Because of this, a number of positions—shortstop, second base, right, and left field—were filled by players who were aging, injury prone, or in the decline phase of their careers. And this meant that Baker needed to give all of them regular days off to keep them playing at peak level, especially as the season moved into August and September.

And here is where the one strength that Neifi and Macias possessed came into play: versatility. Neifi could play any one of three infield positions. Macias could man second, third, and all three outfield spots. So in either case, Dusty could count on a guy who could spot start for several of his veterans, give them a breather late in a game, and also fill in for several days if one of his outfielders happened to sneeze. In addition, having a utility player who could cover many different positions meant that Dusty could use the extra roster spots for a bat-first pinch hitter (i.e. Todd Hollandsworth) or extra bullpen arms.

If these rationalizations sound familiar to you, it’s because they’re exactly the same ones being used to describe the Cubs’ versatility today. Other managers have used their utility players in similar ways to how Dusty played Neifi and Macias and they’ve been lionized for it. Our own Joe Maddon has been hailed for taking advantage of versatility ever since his days in Tampa Bay–and deservedly so. Which leads me to conclude this:

Ben Zobrist would have made Dusty Baker look like a better manager.

Baker’s reasons for giving a roster spot to versatile utility players and his usage pattern for those players wasn’t the problem. The problem was that all the sound baseball theory in the world couldn’t change the fact that those players were Neifi Perez and Jose Macias, who are currently fighting it out to see whose name the Oxford Spanish-to-English Dictionary picks to be the new translation for the word “replacement.”

Having Zobrist on the roster would have given Baker the kind of versatile player he needed to spell his veterans at multiple positions. He could have even used him in a similar way to Macias:

Jose Macias Appearances per Position

Ben Zobrist Appearances per Position

If you switched his time spent at shortstop and third base, Zobrist is essentially what would happen if a game designer looked at Macias and thought, “What if I added skills in categories other than ‘Gloves Owned?’” Baker would easily be justified in resting his veterans more often as an excuse to get Zobrist more plate appearances. And presumably, they’d have even more left in the tank when the Cubs got to the stretch drive.

So Zobrist could have been a better Macias.  But if he wanted, Dusty also could just as easily have used him to be a better Neifi…

Neifi Perez Appearances per Position

Ben Zobrist Appearances per Position

(And I promise this will be the last Neifi or Macias chart you read. BP Wrigleyville policy states if I add one more, I’m required to Google the phrase “How do you make a Clockwork Orange gif?”)

A player like Zobrist gives a manager the best kind of utility player as his versatility enables him to play at many different positions and his offensive skillset provides above average performance at every one. For all his faults, Dusty Baker valued versatility in his players and knew how to use it. The shame is that he never found a versatile player who displayed other tools to justify his playing time.

Instead of inserting a replacement level player in his starting line-up, Baker would instead be using someone worth between 2.4 and 6.5 WARP every full season of his career.  Granted, in the 2005 and 2006 season, the only additional benefit would have been a couple extra days of getting to say “Suck it, Rockies!” But add an extra 3 to 6 wins to the record in 2004 and suddenly things get very interesting.

Now if only I can find statistical proof that Zobrist would have convinced Dusty to take Prior out when he was up 11-0 …

Lead photo courtesy Jim Brown—USA Today Sports.