Baker is like Francona and Charlie Manuel. Their strength lies in being able to communicate with their players not the X's and O's of the game. Hell Bobby Valentine is smarter than all three and is still a bad manager because he lacks that one talent.
I'm not sure there is much to X's and O's in baseball managing. Billy Martin always managed to get the lefty/righty matchups, and announcers always praised him ffor thinking so far in advance. Batters still struck out or hit into DPs. Dialogue between Ted Williams and a nats pitcher in 1969 season:
Ted: You stupid dope, you let that guy get a hit. I would have hit .400 off you
Pitcher: Then I want your job, because any job where you can fail six times out of ten and be a star must be nice, Ted.
