Washington Nationals: Dusty Baker narrative needs to end now

The Washington Nationals have been poorly managed in 2018, but the Dusty Baker narrative hanging over the team needs to end if they want to move forward.

Washington Nationals manager Davey Martinez had huge shoes to fill, replacing Dusty Baker before the 2018 season. So far, he’s been far from up to the task, but the team and its fans need to let the narrative around Baker go, immediately.

A recent interview that the 22-year managerial veteran had with The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal was published on Friday. In the interview, Baker talked about his time with the Nats, where he was largely critical of the front office and how they handled things.

Baker was incredibly successful in his time with the Nationals, going a combined 192-132 in two regular seasons. He also comfortably scooped up two NL East titles, but still fell in the NLDS in both years.

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Although he made huge managerial errors in those playoff games, it still seemed like a mistake to fire him after the 2017 season. But Nats fans need to move on from the decision and decide whether Martinez is the right man for the job without comparing him to Baker.

First off, and most importantly, Baker isn’t coming back, let’s make that abundantly clear. His tenure as manager came to a pretty messy ending, with the team’s owners not wanting to shell out top-tier money to keep him around, so why would that change now.

Also, there’s still no guarantee that he would’ve been leading the NL East given all the injuries and underperformance. He was able to handle the injuries well last year, but this year has been even worse on that front, so it’s tough to say how he’d have fared.

Bryce Harper and his struggles early in the year were tough to get through as well for Martinez. How do we know that this exact same slump wouldn’t have happened under Baker? There is no definitive way to know.

In his interview with Rosenthal, Baker talked about his and Rick Schu’s management of Harper, and how they would immediately tell him if something was off. But this slump went deeper than that, his mechanics largely seemed fine, he was just getting some awful luck on balls in play.

None of this is to say that we should be singing Martinez’s praises by any means. His rookie managerial season has been littered with ill-advised decision making that has likely put him on the hot seat at the end of the season.

But if Nationals fans are constantly going to be comparing a rookie manager, to one of their most seasoned, and possibly most successful manager, then he’ll never be able to please the fans. Nobody can turn back time and reverse the decision, so harping on about it being a mistake for the foreseeable future does nobody any good.

The organization made its decision, and right or wrong we need to judge Martinez for being Martinez. That’s the only real way to know whether he is the manager to take the team forward in the future.

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For all the regular season success the Washington Nationals had with Dusty Baker, it’s time to put that narrative to bed. Time to focus on the current management situation on its own.

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