The Dusty Baker Enigma

Jonah Keri:

So here's the question that will really cook your noodle: Are the Reds and their emerging young players crushing their preseason projections because of Dusty Baker, or in spite of him? Baker makes personnel decisions that make your head spin. He's benched Frazier for Rolen more than you'd like when Rolen was healthy and Votto wasn't, or for veteran flotsam like Miguel Cairo when Rolen was hurt. With Ludwick absolutely killing the ball, he benched him twice in five days: once after a three-hit performance, the other after cracking two homers in a game. And of course there's the eternal dilemma with Aroldis Chapman: If he could be even close to this dominant as a starter, isn't he terribly wasted in short relief?
Could there be a method to Baker's madness? Maybe he's not opposed to fully trusting young talents like Frazier as much as he wants to keep everyone engaged with playing time, keeping the starters fresh at the same time. Maybe an erratic player like Ludwick needs time off to avoid becoming overexposed as an everyday player. Maybe Baker used his decades of baseball knowledge and decided that Chapman is best suited for relief work, the Reds' need for starting pitching help be damned. Or maybe Baker's simply a good leader of men, a trait that gets overlooked when evaluating managers, one that's impossible to properly quantify but still matters. These are plausible scenarios, as is the possibility that the Reds would've won even more games with someone else in charge.
It's more or less an impossible debate to resolve. In a season so wild that the Reds can rip off 10 wins in a row, storm to the best record in the league, and cause a 70-year-old Marty Brennaman to shave his head, it's still a fun debate to have.

The first couple years that Dusty managed, I was a full throated critic.  I thought he ragged out young pitchers' arms, and coddled his everyday players too much.  But after he guided the team to the division championship in 2010, I quit criticizing him.  How he managed to win with those guys, and how he managed to make the right personnel decision nearly every single time just blew me away.  Now, anytime I hear a sports talk host blasting Dusty for costing the Reds a game, I figure he's still ahead in the win-loss category.  Go Dusty.