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Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy has retired from the Dayton Daily News after covering the Cincinnati Reds for 37 years. Hal's blog, though, will continue to be a must-read for Reds fans. He'll share his thoughts on the team this season and will file updates from Great American Ball Park. You also can catch Hal in print every Sunday in his popular Ask Hal columnHome > Blogs > The Real McCoy | Cincinnati Reds baseball news > Archives > 2011 > June > 21
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Baker says Cardinals still have the right stuff
CINCINNATI — It was a couple of hours before a persistent downpour forced postponement of Tuesday’s Cincinnati Reds-New York Yankees game in Great American Ball Park and the media was gathered around the desk of Reds manager Dusty Baker.
With Albert Pujols out for four to six weeks, won’t the St. Louis Cardinals suffer cardiac arrest and slump toward the bottom of the National League Central?
Baker won’t fall into that trap and he took the mountain-top road when asked about it.
“I don’t know about that, we’ll see in six weeks,” he said. “A lot of times somebody else picks it up. They still have that dangerous Matt Holliday and Lance Berkman and Skip Schumaker and Jon Jay is a good player. I’ll let you know at the end of six weeks because it is hard to predict what is going to happen.”
Baker, though, couldn’t resist pushing onward on the subject, especially when somebody mentioned that the Cardinals lost starting pitcher Adam Wainwright for the entire season during spring training and the Cardinals continued to hang tough.
“Yeah, well, Kyle Lohse picked it up and Kyle McClellan picked it up,” Baker said.
THEN AFTER A pause, Baker said, “I ain’t really worried about the Cardinals. If we do our job and get our thing together and worry more about what we need to do and not worry about anybody else, that’s how you do well.”
A persistent writer said that the Reds had to look at this six-week period as a time to take advantage of the St. Louis misfortune and Baker said, “No, not at all. I don’t look at it that way. Not at all. There was a period early this season when Pujols wasn’t hitting, like he wasn’t even there at all. But Berkman and Holiday were damn near one-two in the league in hitting.
“You take Berkman out of the equation and see where their offense would be,” he said. “That’s the biggest acquisition they made during the winter. I worried about if he would return to form, which he has.
“The Cardinals have three big bats in their lineup with some guys to get on in front of them,” said Baker. “There aren’t many teams that have three or four big bats in there like they do.”
IT WAS POINTED out that the Reds have had their injury problems, too, especially in the starting pitching department and Baker said, “Yeah, we were treading water for a while and as soon as it looked as if we might start swimming we were treading water again.”
More than the Cardinals or the Milwaukee Brewers, Baker is looking at the present — the Reds string of interleague games.
So far, they are 1-6 in interleague play and they are in the midst of 12 straight games against the American League East.
So far they are 1-2 against Toronto and 0-1 against the Yankees, with two more against New York at home, then three at Baltimore and three at Tampa Bay.
Then they have three at home against the Cleveland Indians of the AL Central, against whom the Reds are 0-3 this year.
“We have to figure out how to win in this interleague, especially against this American League East,” he said. “It appears to be the toughest division in baseball, to me. Historically it has been for a long time. They have some awfully good teams in that division.
“There aren’t many National League teams that are faring very well against American League teams right now,” Bakder added.
Before Tuesday’s games, the NL was 25-37 against the AL and the Cardinals (4-2) were the only NL Central team with a winning record in interleague play.
BAKER ADDRESSED (sort of) his thoughts on the way he uses outfielder Chris Heisey, The People’s Choice to be the regular left fielder.
Heisey started five of the last seven games, but Jonny Gomes was scheduled to play Tuesday night. As a starter over 21 games, Heisey is hitting .240 with 15 RBIs. As a pinch-hitter, he leads the league with a .381 average (8 for 21) and leads the league in pinch-hit RBIs with eight.
“I have my opinion on this and other people have their opinions,” said Baker. “I can’t worry about everybody else’s opinion. I have a job to do and I work with what I think my personnel can do. There was a time last year when everybody wanted Laynce Nix to play and there was a time everybody wondered why Jonny Gomes was or wasn’t playing. Now there are people wondering by Freddie Lewis isn’t playing.
“I can’t worry about confirming what I think because that’s why I’m getting paid to do this job,” he added. “I’m down here with these guys. I’m not in the stands, I’m not calling in the talk shows, so I’m not concerned what anybody thinks about anything. Let’s just see where we are while we’re in the thick of things and see where we are at the end.”
People wonder why Baker keeps playing Gomes and he said, “I continue to try to wait on Jonny Gomes because we need run producers right now and he has been a run producer for us. Anybody else the fans name has played well, but they haven’t been run producers.”
BAKER RECALLED how when he played for the Atlanta Braves as a young player and batted behind Hank Aaron.
“I’d watch pitchers throw Hank hanging breaking balls, nothing change-ups and sinkers that didn’t sink,” he said. “Then I’d come up there and they’d throw me nasty, unhittable pitches. So I went to Hank and I said, ‘How come they are pitching me the way they should be pitching you?’ And Hank said, ‘Because they aren’t afraid of you, they aren’t pitching with tension.’”
LAST WEEK I received a great number of excellent questions for Ask Hal, better than usual, and most of them are good. Need some more now. Send ‘em ASAP to halmccoy1@hotmail.com to make this Sunday’s paper.
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