Baker on facing knuckleballer: "Hope he throw you a fastball"

ATLANTA - Manager Dusty Baker was in no mood to talk about Gio Gonzalez and his walk totals. Despite a 2.47 ERA, Gonzalez has walked 14 batters in his last three starts. That number spiked a bit with the seven walks allowed on May 3 against Arizona.

"I'm just trying to figure why you all always ask me some negative question," Baker said. "I'm serious. It happens. Every start is not the same. Every at-bat is not the same. You just got to let it kind of play out. I don't know why walks are up. As long as he can make quality pitches to get out of it. Gio is fine. He's been pitching good."

"We got to do more scoring for him," Baker concluded. "I think him and Stras got the least amount of run support."

The biggest news in Atlanta this week was the loss of the Braves' best player, Freddie Freeman, for at least 10 weeks with a fractured wrist. Baker said he never likes to see players getting hurt at any time during the season.

"You never want to see anybody injured ever, because you don't want to think that, because it can jump on you," Baker said. "I know how it felt. We lost Derrek Lee in L.A. when he got his hand crushed, and we weren't the same without D. Lee. You hate to see anybody get hurt. What goes through your mind, you hope he has a speedy recovery. He was having a great year. He's an outstanding hitter and seemed like a great dude. I don't know him. All he does is play. He doesn't showboat. You can appreciate someone on the other side even though you hate to see him come to the plate. "

Tonight the Nationals face knuckleballer R.A. Dickey. Daniel Murphy and Trea Turner have never faced Dickey.

Baker's strategy against a knuckleballer?

"Yeah, hope he throw you a fastball," Baker shot back.

"There's no real strategy. But if you can run they don't want to hit you. So, you take away the plate on him and don't give him too big a window to throw to. The last he wants to do is hit you. Try to get one up. And that's all in theory, of course.

The bullpen did not have a good last couple of days. The Pirates outscored the Nats 6-1 and 10-4 in the last two games. The bullpen allowed six runs (five earned) in those two losses. Baker gave his assessment of the state of his bullpen and what he would like to see his starters do this weekend:

"Not good. We lost two out of three," Baker said. "High-scoring games. So, we need innings. We need innings out of our starters. Quality innings, and we need to score some more because they outscored us for a team that wasn't scoring. Number one, we need to outscore them to take pressure off our bullpen."