Were will the Reds be in the standings on Aug. 4th?

[takealeake]

LOL @ OP. Nice call, Nostradumbass.

[redram]

LOL @ OP. Nice call, Nostradumbass.

LMAO classic

[5TimeWSChamps]

At least you can have fun with it!!!!

Yeah. In all honesty I'm sure everyone's posted something on here that they regret.

I try to cut out on in-game or post-game posting anymore, especially if we lose

[dubc47834]

Yeah. In all honesty I'm sure everyone's posted something on here that they regret.

I try to cut out on in-game or post-game posting anymore, especially if we lose

Yes we all have done it, some just do it more than others. Plus I can respect a guy if he owns it afterwards instead of running from it and coming up with all these excuses.

[drowg14]

Best record in baseball by a couple games and people are idiotic enough to think it's in spite of the manager.

Here are two quotes from sparky anderson

The players make the manager, it's never the other way

I don't believe a manager ever won a pennant. Casey Stengel won all those pennants with the Yankees. How many did he win with the Boston Braves and Mets? I've never seen a team win a pennant without players. I think the only thing the manager has to do is keep things within certain boundaries.

If Sparky Anderson says that managers don't make teams, it at the very least validates the opinion that the Reds could be winning in spite of Dusty, whether this is actually true or not. So saying that this view is "idiotic" just because it is a different view than you have is laughable.

[smixsell]

This Dusty hate is amazing.....LOL. The guy barely gets any credit for anything. Its amazing how people can bash on him even tho we have the BEST RECORD IN BASEBALL!!!!!

No Dusty hate here, I give him credit all the time.

Simply a lack of logic on the part of you Kool-Aide drinkers. Reds win = Dusty genius and Reds lose = we have no talent, that's as far as your logic goes.

I'm atually saying something balanced.

Dusty is managing much better now, I give him full credit for that, but observe that it took a fairly natural phenomenon, the team buckling down in the face of an injury to their leader, to get this team playing to their potential.

That's something Dusty has failed to do for quite some time, and he is accountable for that--- just as he deserves some significant credit for our current great form.

[Brisco]

The fact that it took Votto's injury and the typical "lets all pull together and do more" effect that often happens in such situation for this team to start playing tight baseball shows how poor Dusty has been leading the team up until now.

It just proves what many of us have been saying all along, that this team should have been 10 up more than a month ago, but played such loose baseball under Dusty's lacklustre leadership that we were grossly underachieving.

For the record I and many Dusty bashers have been saying that with our talent we should be playing much better, and now the team is proving it.

Now that Dusty has done such revolutionary things like actually putting the most dominant pitcher in major league history in the closer role (it only took Chapman pitching like 30 stright scoreless innnings for Dusty to figure that one out! LOL) we are finally playing like we could have been playing a lot earlier.

PS I DO give Dusty credit, and have in many earlier threads including a few BEFORE our 21-3 run, for managing much better than in previous years. In fact that's one of the reasons we're doing so well now. He's finally doing some things right. Keep it up Dusty!

Please ask yourself how you identify a good or bad manager.
I believe the only answer you can say, based on this and your many other posts, is that a good manager makes the same decisions you would. Since Dusty Baker does not do things the way you do, he must be bad.

actual objective data appears to be a very malleable concept for you. For example, under the scientific process that the United States Military Academy at West Point developed to analyze leadership, two of the most important factors are the success of the unit mission, and the ability of the unit to react to adverse unforeseen consequences. Those who study leadership for a living and teach at the most respected leadership institution in the world would view the Reds recent success, especially after the loss of Joey Votto, as very strong evidence of excellent unit cohesion caused by excellent leadership. You apparently see the same evidence and believe that it screams a failure of leadership, primarily based on the evidence that the leader did not make the same decisions you would have.

You may believe that if you were in charge.. If you could be Dusty Baker, or Hal Moore or David Petraeus that your natural skills make you a better judge of how to lead than a lifetime of experience in the field.... That you could have won any battle or any game in history just because it is all so simple to you.

In the Army we had a name for people like that who thought they knew everything and that it was all so easy: Private.

[smixsell]

Please ask yourself how you identify a good or bad manager.
I believe the only answer you can say, based on this and your many other posts, is that a good manager makes the same decisions you would. Since Dusty Baker does not do things the way you do, he must be bad.

actual objective data appears to be a very malleable concept for you. For example, under the scientific process that the United States Military Academy at West Point developed to analyze leadership, two of the most important factors are the success of the unit mission, and the ability of the unit to react to adverse unforeseen consequences. Those who study leadership for a living and teach at the most respected leadership institution in the world would view the Reds recent success, especially after the loss of Joey Votto, as very strong evidence of excellent unit cohesion caused by excellent leadership. You apparently see the same evidence and believe that it screams a failure of leadership, primarily based on the evidence that the leader did not make the same decisions you would have.

You may believe that if you were in charge.. If you could be Dusty Baker, or Hal Moore or David Petraeus that your natural skills make you a better judge of how to lead than a lifetime of experience in the field.... That you could have won any battle or any game in history just because it is all so simple to you.

In the Army we had a name for people like that who thought they knew everything and that it was all so easy: Private.

What a complete load of b*llsh*t. LOL!

Those who know baseball, or any sport acrtually, know that the phenomenon of a team (even one with a totally hapless and incompetant leader) pulling together or just plain upping the effort level when a leader goes out is quite common.

But you magically transform it into scientific proof that Dusty is a good manager based on the US military Academy Criteria for Leadership. LOL Nice try at making a completely inapt comparison seem "scientific and irrefutable.

The original point in my post---That the team pulling together and upping the effort level is ONE of the reasons why we suddenly went into WIN WIN WIN mode when Votto went down, and that this actually raises some questions concerning why they were not able to achieve this under Dusty's leadership without the natural external stiulii of a key player injury---remains not unlu unrefuted but completely ignored by you.

Instead you give a load of some of the funniest BS I've ever heard.

[Brisco]

What a complete load of b*llsh*t. LOL!

Those who know baseball, or any sport acrtually, know that the phenomenon of a team (even one with a totally hapless and incompetant leader) pulling together or just plain upping the effort level when a leader goes out is quite common.

But you magically transform it into scientific proof that Dusty is a good manager based on the US military Academy Criteria for Leadership. LOL Nice try at making a completely inapt comparison seem "scientific and irrefutable.

The original point in my post---That the team pulling together and upping the effort level is ONE of the reasons why we suddenly went into WIN WIN WIN mode when Votto went down, and that this actually raises some questions concerning why they were not able to achieve this under Dusty's leadership without the natural external stiulii of a key player injury---remains not unlu unrefuted but completely ignored by you.

Instead you give a load of some of the funniest BS I've ever heard.

You are attempting to use rhetoric to prove that Dusty is a poor manager. Since my first response was too general, let's get down to brass tacks.

First, a restatement of the first argument: I believe you are proposing that the surge in performance following the Votto injury is evidence of poor leadership, and I am arguing that it is actually evidence of good leadership.

Hmmm... interesting.... let's try to turn this into a test where we can use objective criterion to evaluate who is correct rather than rely on the old "everybody knows" argument, ok?

Let's do this one step at a time. To avoid argument shift, I think we need to identify which statistics we will use/limit ourselves to. Also, since you apparently have your finger on the pulse of communal baseball knowledge, I am going to allow you to largely present the basis for this analysis.

First, you propose that it is "quite common" for a team, even in the face of poor leadership, to "pull together" and "up the effort level" when they lose their best performer.

What percentage is "quite common"? What specific statistics would reflect a team "pulling together" and "upping the effort level" and what sort of increase would you find to be statistically significant?

Next, so we can have a starting point for good leadership, please identify the top 25 managers in baseball history from your standpoint so we can use their methods and results as evidence of good leadership. Also, so we stay within your frame of reference, please rank the current 30 managers in baseball from best to worst so we can see which are good and which are "hapless and incompetent."

Finally, please tell me what statistic or statistics you would like to use to evaluate the overall "talent" of a given player. Again, you get to set the playing field here. You can choose whether to use .OPS or battineg average or OB% (for hitters) or frankly any stat you want and believe to be a correct statement of value. The same is true for pitchers... any stat you want.

(You may be tempted to reverse engineer your rankings... in other words, you will decide how best to support your conclusion and then decide on rankings and statistics that reflect this. I believe this risk will be lessened due to your prior posts on this board.)

Please do not employ an avoidance reply such as "not worth the effort." I do not have enough baseball knowledge to evaluate if Dusty Baker is the best or even the right manager for this team. That said, he is MY manager on MY team (yeah... I am one of those Kool-Aid drinking fans that links part of their identity to the team), so I do not react positively to folks continually bashing him... especially in the face of Reds success. Therefore this thread will provide the two sides to this argument (Me representing the Kool-Aid Drinkers and you representing the Bashers) to finally do a comprehensive analysis of this issue one step at a time.

One side note, USMA has studied leadership in all walks of life, including sports. In my work with the Army, I had the opportunity to analyze and interact with the leadership of many well-known sports "leaders" such as Don Shula and Mike Kryzewski. Yes, each mission requires different leadership methods and yes, leadership is ultimately an art, but, as I believe that you will learn through this process, the evaluation of leadership can be very scientific.

[Kingspoint]

If Sparky Anderson says that managers don't make teams, it at the very least validates the opinion that the Reds could be winning in spite of Dusty, whether this is actually true or not. So saying that this view is "idiotic" just because it is a different view than you have is laughable.

Exactly. I don't know how people can disrespect Sparky Anderson this way. Those who have been around long enough remember Sparky saying that a Manager can't win games, he can only lose them.