Dusty Says "Get Off My Back"



Cubs manager Dusty Baker might've won 3 Manager Of The Year awards, he might be handsomely paid and mucho beloved despite never having won World Series. But in Baker's opinion, the level of criticism he's suffered, particularly in regards to his handling of starters Mark Prior and Kerry Wood, is unjustified. From Friday's Chicago Tribune and Paul Sullivan.

"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?"

"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."




(the man on the right is freezing. the man on the left needs sweat bands for the intense workout his forearms will receive while watching a baseball game)

Hoo boy. Now that Bartman-mania has died down, more than a few observers have looked at Games 6 and 7 and concluded that when two of the best young arms in the NL run out of gas (at home) in potential pennant clinchers, maybe their workload was a cause.

Posted: Fri - March 12, 2004 at 06:14 PM      

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