Reds manager Dusty Baker said nothing has changed in terms how he directs his team, now that the Reds have opened a large lead over the Cardinals in the Central Division.

"Not yet," Baker said. "If you've got an eight-game lead with seven games to go, then you can start doing things different. But there's a long way to go. You have to stay on it, stay after it. Look at what happened to my good friend Jim Leyland and the Tigers last year. So you have to stay after it."

Baker added his Reds have been both resilient and focused on the big picture. The sweep they suffered at the hands of the Cardinals in early August proved to be nothing more than a speed bump.

"These guys, evidently, being swept didn't bother them as much as everyone thought it would," Baker said. "But we got on a streak where we've been playing very good baseball and the Cardinals ran into a streak where they weren't playing very good baseball.

"But this thing is a long way from being over. These are three big games here. The Cardinals are always tough here, then we go to Colorado and they're always tough there... They always play well late, they believe they can come back because they've done it beforem, big time. So this is a very big road trip."