Quote Originally Posted by Ltlabner View Post
To me, this is the outcome of the concerns about Dusty and walks. He's going to be pressuring some kids who already have a propensity to swing freely to go up there and swing more freely.

I see that as a bad thing.
I dunno... I went back and looked at Baseball Reference, and in the two instances where Dusty took over a team, hitters generally did about what they'd done before with respect to walk rate. The Cubs did take a dip when he got there, but that was almost wholly explainable by the dip in Sammy Sosa's walk rate, which was almost wholly explainable by the National League noticing he wasn't hitting 60 homers a year anymore, or maybe Sammy himself noticing.

Baker's apathy towards walks and related apathy towards OBP will show up in the lineup construction, but not IMO by changing the stripes of the hitters.