To replace A.J. Hinch, the Houston Astros went for a traditional baseball man in Dusty Baker.

This, on its face, is a good move. Baker has 1,863 managerial wins and he is highly respected in baseball circles. He is beloved by Joey Votto.

But looking at what lies just underneath the surface of this, things get a little dicey.

There has been a fight brewing between those who believe in analytics over everything and the more old-school scouting-based baseball. The Astros, long considered to be the ultimate example of this new technologically-advanced style of baseball, hiring an old-school baseball man like Dusty Baker is a clearly calculated move to cleanse themselves of their high-tech cheating reputation is blatant in its symbolism.

The details of the deal emerged this afternoon:

The option is a team one and the terms make me a little sad. He’s one of the most successful managers available, and this just indicates how desperate he is to work. What does that say about the state of baseball?

I was also reminded of the glass cliff. The theory of the glass cliff usually applies to women in corporate culture, but the fundamental idea applies here too.

Per Wikipedia:

The glass cliff is the phenomenon of women in leadership roles, such as executives in the corporate world and female political election candidates, being likelier than men to achieve leadership roles during periods of crisis or downturn, when the chance of failure is highest.

The Astros are a mess and their reputation is in the gutter, neither of which are the fault of Dusty Baker. Baker is hired to scrub up the reputation, act as a symbolic shift in culture. If the Astros don’t do well (or, more specifically, get killed by the Oakland A’s), Baker can be jettisoned and any failure can be laid at his feet, rather than owner Jim Crane, who was ultimately responsible for the Astros' culture that became so problematic in the first place. The Astros will then be able to point at Baker and say, “See, we tried the old-school way. Let’s try soulless tech again!” It also gives them time to find their “real” manager.

Again, hiring Dusty Baker isn’t a bad move and for his part, he clearly wants to work. The Astros are an experienced and very talented team, likely to be very fun to manage. This is a playoff calibre team to be managed by a guy who gets teams to the playoffs.

I applaud this move, as I would applaud any team that would hire Baker, but I do so with a bit of angst.

Today’s Walk Up

Doing a bit of research on Baker, I find this New Yorker article from 2015. The article talks about a book Baker wrote about his trip to the Monterey Pop Festival as an 18 year old in 1967. The trip was a gift from his mother, a lady who also nicknamed him ‘Dusty’ when he was a toddler because he was constantly dirty.

Baker was enthralled by Jimi Hendrix:

When I think back on it now, the look on Jimi’s face between songs that day was a look I know all too well: It was the look of someone who has just hit a home run. To fans the feeling you have when you hit a home run must seem like the ultimate in self-congratulation or exultation, and there is some of that in there, especially with certain homers, but most of all the feeling you have is a kind of calm exhilaration and wonder, a sense not that you had done_ something in launching that ball over the fence but that you were part _of something, the swing of your bat striking a ball rushing your way and connecting to make something special happen. You almost feel that the bat did the work, it feels so light in your hands, the swing feels so easy. Hendrix had that exhilarated look of being as amazed as all of us at what was happening with his guitar.