Wait, What?

Is this real life? Or is this a bad dream where the Lerners are doing their best Dan Snyder impersonation? Well, I can tell you that yes, it is real life, and yes, the Lerners are doing their best Dan Snyder impersonation. The Lerner family, clearly upset about the outcome of last season, saw this as an opportunity to take some control and stick it to Mike Rizzo, and that's exactly what they did. That leaves us where we are this morning, with Dusty Baker, not Bud Black, as the new manager of the Washington Nationals.

I want to make this abundantly clear before I go any further, I like Dusty Baker, his track record speaks for itself. He gets a bad rap for his handling of a pitching staff, but I'm not sold on that. People will point to his "over usage" of starting pitchers and relief pitchers. The most notable example is Mark Prior. The problem with this argument is that Prior threw 167 2/3 innings combined between the minors and majors in 2002. Baker upped his innings total in 2003 to 234 1/3 including the playoffs in 2003, a difference of almost 67 innings. Sure, that's a big increase in innings, but wait a minute, didn't Terry Collins just do something similar with not just one Mets pitcher, but two? Noah Syndergaard entered the 2015 season having pitched 133 innings (which he did in 2014), or less, in every season of his career. This season Syndergaard pitched 198 2/3 innings including the playoffs, which is a difference of almost 66 innings. Matt Harvey, coming off of Tommy John surgery just pitched 215 2/3 innings this year including the postseason. Not only is that a career high for Harvey, but he's also setting that career high after coming off of major surgery. The point is, lets not jump on Baker for ruining the careers of Mark Prior and Kerry Wood. Kerry Wood had injury issues before Baker even arrived in Chicago. As for Prior, has anyone ever thought that maybe the guy is just injury prone?

With that being said, if there is one thing that turns me off about hiring Dusty Baker, it's that he believes walks just clog up the bases. As I wrote yesterday, the Nats need to be more like the Royals to dethrone the Mets and to advance in the playoffs. Being more like the Royals means putting the ball in play more and getting more people on base. I don't care if that means via walk, hit, hit by pitch, it doesn't matter. Dusty Baker is an old-school manager though, he likes power, he likes home runs. Fortunately for him, the Nationals can hit a good amount of those. Unfortunately for Nationals fans, the Nationals will most likely finish top three in the Majors in strikeouts because there will not be a change in philosophy. I know Baker wins, but the Mets pitching staff is dominant. If you don't care about on base percentage and walks, you aren't going to beat them.

As for the Lerner family and Mike Rizzo - they should all be ashamed of themselves and completely embarrassed. My initial reaction late last night/early this morning was that this all falls on Rizzo and he should immediately be fired. That won't happen though and as more details come out, that probably shouldn't happen. However, Mike Rizzo is still to blame for this. Following the 2014 season, Rizzo picked up Matt Williams option for the 2016 season. Well, Matt Williams isn't here anymore, but the Lerner family is still on the hook to pay him $1 million for the 2016 season. That $1 million could have been the difference in being able to sign Bud Black and not being able to sign Bud Black, we may never know. It's also Mike Rizzo's job to tell the Lerners that if you want to get "your guy" to be the next manager, you may have to agree to their terms, not your own. For owners that have no problem agreeing to Scott Boras's terms every offseason, I didn't know this would be that big of a pill to swallow. This may not have been about Bud Black though, this may have been all about Dusty Baker and the Lerner family.

It was reported a few days ago that the Lerner family was thoroughly impressed with Dusty Baker and that they actually preferred him to Bud Black. However, Mike Rizzo and a few other front office personnel preferred Black to Baker, so the Nationals went with Black. The Lerner family seems to be of the thought that it doesn't matter who manages the team though, all that matters is that they're shelling out the money to put a contender on the field. That doesn't make too much sense though from a baseball standpoint or a business standpoint. I'm pretty sure Ted Lerner had his best employees working on the development of Tysons Corner, so wouldn't you want the best guy for the job handling one of your biggest investments, the Washington Nationals? From the outside looking in, it seems that Ted Lerner was going to do anything possible to save a few bucks on this managerial hire because he knows he's paying Matt Williams and most likely Jonathan Papelbon next year even though neither will be with the club. A one year offer with multiple team options is insulting to a manager with as much experience as Bud Black. Dusty Baker seemed to be fine with a two year offer with multiple club options, but that's because he wants to get back into managing. Bud Black stood his ground and honestly, with the experience he has, Dusty could have too. The Nationals are on their fourth manager in five years. It's not because the team has failed to meet expectations (except for this year), but it's more so because the Lerners will not commit to one person past two years. It's called Dan Snyder syndrome and it's hard to treat. The Lerner family, with the help of Mike Rizzo, just started the Washington Nationals 2016 offseason in the most embarrassing way possible. It's left fans frustrated, the rest of Major League Baseball scratching their heads, and the Nationals public relations staff with a huge mess.