A Friday morning news dump by the Washington Nationals confirmed that manager Dusty Baker would not return for the 2018 season.
Here's the statement from the Nationals on Dusty Baker and his coaching staff… pic.twitter.com/pR29C34TwZ
— Mark Zuckerman (@MarkZuckerman) October 20, 2017
Baker won 95 games as Nationals manager in 2016, and another 97 in 2017, claiming the NL East title in both seasons. However, Washington failed to advance in the Postseason in both of those years, falling to the Dodgers in 2016 and the Cubs in 2017 in the NLDS, with both matchups going the full five games.
Perhaps even more brutal is the way the Nationals were eliminated in both of those Postseasons – they lost Game 5 to the Dodgers in 2016 4-3. They lost Game 5 to the Cubs in 2017 9-8. In the Dodgers series, all three of Washington’s losses were by one run, while only two of the three losses were by one run in 2017.
If the Nationals just got a little more luck in either Game 5, or in any of the three other games they lost by a run, we probably wouldn’t be talking about the next Nationals manager today. Baker would likely be coming back for the 2018 season, aiming for one last playoff run with Bryce Harper, Anthony Rendon, Stephen Strasburg, and company.
But that didn’t happen. The Nationals were eliminated in the NLDS, just like they were in 2012 and 2014. Following each of those seasons, the team regressed to second place in the division, and a new manager was brought in. The team doesn’t want to suffer another step back in 2018 and for their window to rudely slam shut – they want a manager that will bring them to the promised land.
Maybe Baker isn’t that guy. However, he is the only manager in franchise history to go to the playoffs in back to back years. His .593 winning percentage over his two seasons at the helm of the team is by far the best in franchise history, ahead of his predecessors, Matt Williams and Davey Johnson.
It’s tough to say what’s next for the Nationals. Whoever they bring in as their next manager will have one mandate – win in 2018. Anything else is a failure. That’s one hell of a bar to set for the next manager, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the leash is even shorter than it was for Baker, Johnson, and Williams.
However, the franchise also has to look forward to the post-Harper era. They not only need a manager that can win now, but one that can win in the future and develop their younger players. That’s a pretty specific list of qualifiers, and it makes me wonder if the Nationals are looking for *another* short-term bridge manager while worrying about the future later.
If that’s the case, they might have been in a better situation had they just brought Baker back – no Nationals manager has started a third straight season as boss since Manny Acta in 2010 (and he was fired after 87 games in that third year), so it would have been a rare show of confidence in Baker that could have helped push the team to further success in 2018.
Who will be the next Nationals manager? That’s anyone’s best guess. If the team hires a retread, the organization needs to hope he succeeds more than Baker did over the last two seasons. And if the organization hires a first-timer, they need to hope he isn’t a bumbling nincompoop like Matt Williams. That’s a tough line to toe, and GM Mike Rizzo will have his work cut out for him.
Baker was hired because their initial two managerial candidates didn’t like the low ball salary offer. Baker has a proven history of not being a good in-game manager, thus he was a poor choice for a team that has the talent to go far in the playoffs. Shame on the Nationals for making salary a key consideration in their choice of manager.