Dusty Baker Is Tired Of Tipping His Cap

The Washington Nationals to date have the best pitching in baseball.

The Nationals starters have two of the top five pitchers in the ERA category.  Stephen Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez   are ranked and Jordan Zimmerman would be if he had enough innings.  The starters lead the league in ERA, batting average against and strikeouts.  The bullpen has been outstanding to.  The Reds bullpen has the top ranking but Washington is fourth.

That doesn't excuse Reds hitters according to Dusty Baker.  The Reds have scored just 16 runs in six games in losing five of six to the Nationals, that includes one game in which the Reds scored eight.  Also, three of the games were extra innings.

"They have a good rotation and those guys in the bullpen," Baker said.  "We have to find a way to hit them.  I'm tired of tipping my hat to them.  How many times can you tip your hat?  When I first got to the big leagues I remembering asking Orlando Cepeda.  'Is this like this every day?' He said, 'Everyday.'  There were no weak sisters out there.  I mean, Chicago had a bad team and they had Bill Hands and Ferguson Jenkins.  LA had (Bill) Singer, (Don) Sutton and some other bad dudes.  San Francisco had Juan Marichal and two other bad dudes.  Houston had Don Wilson, Jim Ray (J.R Richard), Doug Griffin (actually Tom), throwing about a thousand miles an hour, (Larry) Dierker and that's on a bad ball club."

"Every team had someone throwing 94 plus.  Welcome to the big leagues.  That's what amazes me about Hank Aaron and Orlando Cepeda. Those were the guys they were facing every day, (Don) Drysdale, (Sandy) Koufax, (Tom) Seaver, Sutton.  How many Hall of Famers came up in that era?  (Gerry) Koosman, (John) Matlack, holy shit.  You had to be ready every day."

"I was always taught that dude had four days to think about how to get you out.  I had less than 24 hours sometimes.  You go from one bad dude to another bad dude. You can't give them too much credit."