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Dusty Baker was asked on Friday afternoon if he took any pride in the fact that the Washington Nationals have overcome a long, long, long list of injuries to get where they’re at today, with a 77-50 record and a 12.5-game lead in the NL East.
“I don’t know if pride would be the word, thankful would be more of a better word for me,” Baker said.
“I’m thankful that we’re in this position and the guys have performed and no excuses and no alibis.”
“I heard Pat Riley and Phil Jackson, they say every year is different, every year is a new challenge,” Baker continued, “and so you’ve got to — I mean, I was just thinking today, I lost both my center fielders, I lost my left fielder, and lost my right fielder, lost my shortstop and then lost my backup shortstop and then we lost [Max] Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, [Shawn] Kelley, [Ryan] Madson, Koda [Glover], [Joe] Ross... [Enny] Romero... [Sammy] Solis, hot dang. It’s giving me a headache.”
Jayson Werth, Trea Turner, Brian Goodwin... the list goes on.
“So that’s a tribute to the guys we have here, you know what I mean,” Baker said. “I tell them I don’t want to hear no excuses, no nothing, just come to play.”
Scherzer is just the latest National to deal with an injury issue, a neck problem that’s plagued him for the last few weeks and kept him out of a few starts.
He got through his latest bullpen and throwing sessions, so Baker was hoping the right-hander would be able to start one of today’s games.
“We hope so, but if not then we have a backup play in order just in case Max can’t answer the bell tomorrow,” Baker said before Saturday’s game.
“He’s close though, he’s very close.”
After the Nationals win over the Mets, however, Baker said Scherzer wasn’t quite ready to return to the rotation.
“Tomorrow we’re going with [Erick] Fedde in the first game,” Baker revealed.
“He’s our 26th man that you can call up and we’re going with Tanner [Roark] in the second game and we’re planning on going with Max on Monday.”
Fedde, 24, will come back up for his third major league starts after facing Colorado and Chicago (NL) in his first two major league outings.
HERE’S THE NATIONALS’ LINEUP FOR TODAY’S GAME WITH THE METS:
#Nats vs #Mets 3 of 4 and 1 of 2: Kendrick 2B, Difo SS, Rendon 3B, Zimmerman 1B, Wieters C, Taylor CF, De Aza LF, Bautista RF, Fedde RHP
— federalbaseball (@federalbaseball) August 27, 2017