Dusty Baker, Reds players react to McCutchen's HBP

The following are the full responses from Dusty Baker and several Reds' players about the pitch that hit Andrew McCutchen:

Dusty Baker:

I didn't understand why they were upset (thinking) that we were trying to hit McCutchen. I told the umpire, "Why would we throw at the fastes- running man in the league to lead off the inning in a three-run game"? You think we had Sam LeCure out there, our set-up man, for nothing? We were trying to keep the score like it was. The fans were all upset, but common sense will tell you that isn't the time to hit somebody. We didn't say anything when Choo squared to bunt and that ball was up-and-in on him. You just sort of wonder. They're leading the league in hit batsmen, but as soon as you come close to one of their guys, you know (pause). They say they pitch inside. Everybody needs to pitch inside, if you think about it logically. Plus McCutchen doesn't do anything to warrant you to hit him. All he does is play, and he's a great player. The umpire said he understood but he got a notice from the league that there is bad blood here. I think people just keep going with it and every time somebody gets hit, everybody magnifies it. People want to know if there is going to be bad blood even before the game starts. I just wish they would let us play.

Joey Votto:

I have no idea. I've played baseball for a long time. The fans reacted a certain way, but their team, they're a bunch of veteran guys. I just can't imagine why they would think we'd throw at them. It just doesn't make any sense to me at all, if they think that. Why would we want to put an MVP guy on base who, part of his game is stealing bases? If they think that, I'm surprised, but I can't imagine that. We're just playing ball out there and accidents happen. It's part of the game and I'm very confident Andrew knows that.

Brandon Phillips:

Nobody's trying to hit nobody. ... In a situation like that, it's the last thing that crossed my mind.

Devin Mesoraco

It's 2-2, it's late, we needed to make a pitch in, and Sammy just lost it up-and-in. You don't want to see that. I think sometimes the bad blood between the two teams gets overblown. We're both out there trying to compete. We're out there playing good baseball. Clean baseball. We're not trying to play beanball with these guys at this point in the year. We're trying to win games and me and Sammy felt we needed to go inside there and we went inside and he lost it a little bit and it ended up hitting him.  You don't want any type of beanball to affect the game. They had a three-run lead, we're not trying to put their fastest guy on base to let them steal. Sometimes it gets overblown by everybody, but there's nothing we can do. ... I'm sure Andrew didn't think we were throwing at him in that situation. He hurt us with some balls over the plate in the past so we wanted to throw one in there with Sammy. He's as well-respected of a player as there is in the game and I think he understands how the game is played. There was no intent on our part at all.

From the Pirates' side, Neil Walker said the following:

No, I don’t, not in that situation. It’s a three-run game, Andrew was leading off the inning, I don’t see it. If it was intentional, you wish it wasn’t in the arm, you wish it was in the butt, or the side, or the leg. The fact that he went over there and said something to him -- he probably said, 'Hey man I didn’t try to hit you' -- it says a lot that you don’t see it very often. I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean to hit him.

Manager Clint Hurdle spoke to his ejection:

I was thrown out. Sometimes you get to a point where you’re just not going to agree. I don’t understand a warning. If you’re going to warn, you thought there was intent to hit the guy, you should have thrown the guy out. First time he’d been hit, it’s our guy McCutchen that’d been hit, why [not] just let us play the game? That’s about all I got to say. I just don’t understand sometimes. I think we’re probably from different schools of how the game should be played and the way you want it to be played. We couldn’t come to an agreement.