Dusty Baker
Dusty Baker
Johnnie B. "Dusty" Baker, Jr.is an American Major League Baseball manager and former player. He is currently the manager for the Washington Nationals. He enjoyed a 19-year career as a hard-hitting outfielder, primarily with the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers. He helped the Dodgers to pennants in 1977 and 1978 and to the championship in 1981. He then enjoyed a 20-year career as a manager with the San Francisco Giants, Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, and now Washington Nationals. He...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth15 June 1949
CityRiverside, CA
CountryUnited States of America
We were a lot closer before I got here. When you play 18 times against teams that have been long-time rivalries, and then it's against my former manager and my confidant before I came here, it increases things.
We're going to miss him big time but we know we're going to get him back, too.
When I look at my score sheet and I look at theirs, I'm kind of outmanned, ... I've never been in that situation in September. It's just one of those years, I guess.
It came at the right time. Michael, the last couple of days, came through with some heroics.
He pitched masterfully. That wind was on our side a couple of times today.
He needs to pitch. Even though he has the skill and ability, he needs the innings. He needs to be in certain situations. He's missed more than a couple years here on and off. He needs the endurance. He needs to be in there with bases loaded with no outs and be in all kinds of situations and adverse situations. The main thing is we want him healthy, too.
He struggled early on and made a couple of young mistakes, ... The last two innings, the sixth and seventh, were when he threw the best.
You can't put your finger on it. The last couple of years we've played them tough. That's not the team you want to play every day.
I've heard it's a greater problem in high school with young kids. Baseball is attempting to clean it up by testing. That's where it starts. It appears to be cleaner now than a couple years ago because of the testing.
The last couple weeks, he has really progressed. It's impossible to predict a rehab. You can't rush him, or he will be in-and-out, in-and-out. Hopefully, it's not too long.
is in the process of making a decision. We should have an answer in a couple of days. It's not about Kerry as much as about where we are realistically.
A couple balls caught too much of the plate early, ... We were still in the ballgame, and we ended up giving away like four runs on defense. You can't give away runs in the big leagues. We didn't play very good defense today.
It could be anything, ... Preferably, it's a six-inning arm, but we don't know. It could be a couple of innings.
They found every hole. We helped them with a couple of errors, and we weren't doing it offensively.