Tag: Bryce Harper

Catchers Protect Pitchers, Retaliation

On the Merits of Moving On: Harper and Hunter Try to Make Nice

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Harper-Hunter

Harper-Strickland: The Day After played out in San Francisco yesterday, and was noteworthy primarily for just how un-noteworthy it had become. It became that way because the players made it so. Retaliation was nowhere to be found on the field Tuesday at AT&T Park.

In the visitors’ clubhouse before the game, Bryce Harper—fresh off receiving a four-an appeal-reduced three-game suspension—spoke about the hope that both sides could move on from worrying about the past, saying things like, “That’s gonna suck if I get hit again.”

On the Giants’ side, the conversation turned away from pitcher Hunter Strickland (himself suspended for six games) and toward somebody with significantly more effect on the team’s fortunes, a guy who through his own inaction managed to become a focal point of the story.

But Buster Posey didn’t want to talk about it.

His first comment to reporters was, “I just want to focus on playing the game.” Then he ended the interview.

With space to consider the implications, the more it seems that Posey’s actions were deliberate, not delinquent. If that’s so, the primary question becomes whether the catcher knew about Strickland’s intentions in advance, which leads to two primary scenarios:

  • If he did, Posey likely attempted to dissuade the pitcher from hitting Harper, and was subsequently disgusted when Strickland ignored his advice.
  • If he didn’t, Posey was shocked into inaction, less in a too-surprised-to-move sort of way than a let-dude-fix-his-own-mess sort of way.

In the aftermath of the fight Monday night, in the Giants’ postgame clubhouse, Posey sat facing his locker as Strickland approached from the side to talk to him. What they said was private, but Posey never once turned to look at his teammate. It did not lend an impression of understanding or warmth.

On Tuesday, Strickland tried to put it behind him, saying, “I never once questioned or had to question Buster or anyone on this team. We’re here to win ballgames and I don’t look at it any further than that.”

Discussing the fight itself, Harper expressed some relief that Giants players didn’t get to him more quickly, with particular appreciation for San Francisco first baseman Michael Morse, Harper’s teammate in Washington in 2012, Harper’s rookie year. “I’m thankful that Mikey Mo and [Jeff] Samardzija collided, because Samardzija saw blood a little bit, I thought,” he said

Harper used the phrase “I’m very thankful for Mikey Mo” twice more in the conversation.

As for Morse, he said his intention, had he not collided with his teammate (resulting in a concussion that landed him on the 7-day DL), was to grab Harper and pull him the hell away from the pile. He likes the guy—went out of his way to protect him, not hurt him. How that sits with guys like Strickland or Samardzija, both of whom did see blood a little bit, is unknown.

Ultimately, focus on the situation grew so absurd that Harper even went so far as to suggest that baseball might be better off were players more emotionally in-tune. “If [Strickland] did have a problem,” he told reporters, “he could have talked to me during BP about it, said, hey, I don’t like the way you went about it.”

Then, realizing the folly of his suggestion, he sighed, “That’s not human nature, I guess.”

Let’s leave the last word, though, to Posey, with a sentiment that was, literally, his last word before shooing the gathered media away from his locker before Tuesday’s game. “Funny world we live in, isn’t it?” he said.

Indeed.

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Catchers Protect Pitchers, Retaliation

Hats Off To (Bryce) Harper: Ill-Considered HBP Spawns Ill-Considered Response to Ill-Considered Mound Charge

Posted on by Jason Turbow

 

Harper charges

The guy to watch is Buster Posey.

In the wake of yesterday’s headline-grabbing free-for-all between Bryce Harper and Hunter Strickland, one can learn volumes by watching the Giants catcher.

Sure, Strickland drilled Harper in the hip with as intentional a fastball as can be thrown by a grudge-carrying pitcher.

Sure, his reason—Harper did some staring and some yelling after homering off of Strickland for the second time during the 2014 playoffs—was thin.

Sure, Harper acted like a punk in his own right, throwing his helmet at the pitcher before charging the mound, a decision made all the worse by his wild inaccuracy.

Sure, the fight was intense, at least by baseball standards, with Harper and Strickland getting in at least one shot each, even as Giants Michael Morse and Jeff Samardzija cinematically tackled each other while going after Harper.

It all provided some darn good theater on a lazy Memorial Day afternoon. But the person to watch was Posey.

In situations like yesterday’s, a catcher’s primary role is fight-preventer, his duty being to bear-hug an angry batter from behind before damage can be done to the pitcher. Not Posey. Not yesterday.

Harper took four-and-a-half angry steps before deciding to charge the mound. He took five more, plus a whole bunch of pitter-pats, once he started to run. Also, he threw his helmet.

Yet it wasn’t until Harper and Strickland began trading punches that Posey thought to approach the fracas, far too late to stop anything, or to even slow it down. That’s him, mask on, on the outside of the scrum looking in.

Why didn’t Buster do anything from the outset? Probably because he was nearly as annoyed at Strickland as Harper was. Because Strickland was redressing an issue from three seasons ago, in which the only injury was to Strickland’s ego, during a series the Giants won. (“I don’t even think [Strickland] should be thinking about what happened in the first round [of the playoffs],” Harper said after yesterday’s game. “He should be thinking about wearing that ring home every single night.”)

Posey may have been upset because Strickland decided that the time to do something was in the eighth inning of a game in which the Giants trailed by only two runs. (Given Strickland’s short-relief role, he doubtless felt that he had to seize any available opportunity. Harper’s postseason homers off him in 2014 represented the first two times the players ever met. Monday’s was the third.)

Sure, two were out and the bases were empty, but following Harper in the batting order were Ryan Zimmerman, Daniel Murphy and Anthony Rendon—not exactly the cast you want to face out of the stretch. Sure enough, singles by Zimmerman and Murphy brought home pinch-runner Brian Goodwin to extend the Nats’ lead.

It was foreseeable. Posey foresaw it. And he knew that if the Nationals are to respond at some point during the series, he will likely be the one wearing the target. And he wasn’t pleased. So he stood there.

“Those are some big guys tumbling around on the ground …” Posey explained after the game in a San Jose Mercury News report. “It’ll be a little dangerous to get in there sometimes.” Uh huh.

Posey had every right to be angry with Strickland. Drilling Harper was a stupid decision at a stupid time. Still, it comes down to this: players are obligated to protect their teammates, no matter how much they may disagree with said teammates’ actions. They can offer chastisement in private, of course (one can only hope that Posey took such a tack with Strickland), but over the course of a season, any decision that frays a ballclub’s brotherhood is markedly unhelpful. When it comes to fights, the prevailing notion is: Protect your guys and sort out the details later. 

To that end, Posey failed. He failed not only Strickland, but every other Giants pitcher who might one day wonder whether Buster might have his back when things get weird.

The thing is, Posey wasn’t even alone. Look at Brandon Crawford trotting in from shortstop in the above clip, as if trying to delay his arrival. Maybe Crawford’s just not a fighter. Or maybe it’s a collective anti-Strickland sentiment, almost as if the guy had been making clubhouse pronouncements about his intention to get Harper, even in the face of veteran teammates advising him against it.

Which, given Strickland’s reputation, wouldn’t be surprising.  It all jumbles together in one inane stew that, no matter which angle one chooses, doesn’t look good for the Giants.

Posey watches

Update (5/30): Fox’s Ken Rosenthal suggests that Posey and Strickland may have had an understanding wherein Posey intentionally lay back to let things play out. This would explain a lot of things. Still, it doesn’t account for Posey’s complete lack of movement (were he prepared to act engaged while not actually engaging, one would expect that he’d try to sell it at least a little), nor the fact that Harper’s charge was decidedly unlikely in the first place.

 

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Bryce Harper, New York Yankees, San Francisco Giants, The Baseball Codes, Unwritten-Rules, Washington Nationals

Bryce Harper and Sergio Romo: Secretly Simpatico?

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Keep calm

For a while, it seemed like yesterday would belong to Bryce Harper’s views about baseball’s unwritten rules.

Then Goose Gossage opened his mouth. In what appears to be coincidental timing, the Hall of Fame reliever unloaded to ESPN about noted bat-flipper Jose Bautista being “a fucking disgrace to the game,” among other choice sentiments that ran directly counter to Harper. Gossage, of course, is his generation’s It-Was-Better-When-I-Played standard-bearer, the guy to turn to for strident opinions.

His comments came in response to a benign question about new Yankees reliever Aroldis Chapman, and quickly veered not only to slamming Bautista, but to complaints about how “fucking nerds” who “don’t know shit” are ruining the game from front-office positions, that “fucking steroid user” Ryan Braun gets ovations in Milwaukee, and that modern relievers are too focused on pitch counts and not enough on the game itself.

Gossage, a world-class griper, was simply doing what he does best.

He would have been easier to dismiss had not Giants reliever Sergio Romo—one of the game’s free spirits, a guy loose enough to rock this t-shirt at the Giants’ 2012 victory parade—himself dismissed Harper later in the day.

“Don’t put your foot in your mouth when you’re the face of the game and you just won the MVP,” Romo said about Harper in a San Jose Mercury News report. “I’m sorry, but just shut up.”

In response to Harper’s comment that baseball “is a tired sport, because you can’t express yourself,” the reliever offered a succinct takedown.

“I’m pretty sure if someone has enough money,” he responded, “he can find another job if this is really tired.”

Thing is, Romo and Harper actually seem to agree about most of what they said. Romo is himself demonstrative on the mound, showing more emotion while pitching than perhaps anybody in Giants history. He took care to note, however, the difference between excitement and impudence.

“As emotional and as fiery as I am, I do my best not to look to the other dugout,” he said. “I look to the ground, I look to my dugout, to the sky, to the stands. It’s warranted to be excited. But there is a way to go about it to not show disrespect, not only to the other team but the game itself.”

With those four sentences, Romo cut to the heart of the issue. Contrary to those trying to position this as a cross-coast battle of wills, Harper did not say much to contradict that sentiment.

Baseball’s unwritten rules have changed markedly over the last decade. There is more acceptance of showmanship now than at any point in the sport’s history, and scattershot blasts from the likes of Goose Gossage will not slow that momentum. Because the Code has changed, however, does not mean that it is failing.

The real power of the unwritten rules lies in the maintenance of respect—between teams, within clubhouses and, as Romo went out of his way to note, for the game itself. This core value has not eroded at all.

What has changed over time is ballplayers’ ability to distinguish displays of emotion from displays of disrespect. When the mainstream decides  that bat flips are an acceptable form of self-expression, they no longer have the power to offend.

The reason this hasn’t already gained universal acceptance is that not all bat flips (used here as a proxy for any number of emotional displays) are equal. Bautista’s display during last season’s playoffs was magnificent. Some bats are flipped, however, not with celebration in mind, but in an effort to denigrate the opposition. It might, as Romo noted, include a staredown of the pitcher (as Harper himself has been known to do). It might be some extra lingering around the box, or a glacial trot around the bases. At that point, the method of the opposition’s response—which includes the option of not responding at all—becomes a valid concern.

Romo talked about this distinction, and its importance to the game. Surprisingly, so did Harper.

The MVP noted that Jose Fernandez “will strike you out and stare you down into the dugout and pump his fist.” Because Harper doesn’t take it as a sign of disrespect, Harper doesn’t care. And if Fernandez does not intend it as such, nobody else should, either. (Worth noting is that Fernandez learned an important lesson in this regard early in his career.)

The main fault with Romo’s diatribe was that he inadvertently piggybacked it atop Gossage’s inane old-man ramblings. Still, he lent some nuance to a discourse which sorely needs it, and perhaps inadvertently pointed out that he and Harper have more in common than either of them might otherwise believe.

Ultimately, the question seems to be less “Can’t we all just get along?” than “Why haven’t we figured out that we’re getting along already?”

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Bryce Harper, Unwritten-Rules

Bryce Harper Hates Baseball’s Unwritten Rules. Like it or Not, He’s Also Their Standard-Bearer

Posted on by Jason Turbow

 

Harper ESPN II

Bryce Harper is one with baseball’s unwritten rules. He understands them … and he disapproves. He’ll bend them and tousle with them and bunch them up and whack the league’s stodges over the head with them, smiling all the while.

Harper, though, is not like some of his celebrated—and celebratory—peers, whose blatant disregard for established baseball etiquette—Yasiel Puig’s bat flips, for example—seems as much a calculated an effort to increase their Q rating as anything else. For Harper, it’s more a function of his overall game, a bleeding at the edges of whatever it is that makes him great.

Harper is ESPN’s feature subject of the moment, in an excellent profile by Tim Keown. In it, he says this:

“Baseball’s tired. It’s a tired sport, because you can’t express yourself. You can’t do what people in other sports do. I’m not saying baseball is, you know, boring or anything like that, but it’s the excitement of the young guys who are coming into the game now who have flair. If that’s Matt Harvey or Jacob deGrom or Manny Machado or Joc Pederson or Andrew McCutchen or Yasiel Puig — there’s so many guys in the game now who are so much fun.

“Jose Fernandez is a great example. Jose Fernandez will strike you out and stare you down into the dugout and pump his fist. And if you hit a homer and pimp it? He doesn’t care. Because you got him. That’s part of the game. It’s not the old feeling — hoorah … if you pimp a homer, I’m going to hit you right in the teeth. No. If a guy pimps a homer for a game-winning shot … I mean — sorry.”

In many ways, Harper is correct. This is no longer your father’s baseball league, wherein overt displays of emotion will earn a fastball to the earhole. Nolan Ryan has been retired for nearly a quarter of a century, and no standard-bearer has taken his place.

Puig, meanwhile, stands among an assortment of players who are more than happy to flip and grin and celebrate in ways that have traditionally been foreign to the major leagues. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

It’s interesting that Harper referenced Jose Fernandez, though. The right-hander, among the game’s most exciting players, has earned wide latitude when it comes to displays of enthusiasm. His story, however, is one of maturation—much of which came during the course of a single game in September, 2013.

That day, during the final start of Fernandez’s rookie season, he got into it with Atlanta, for reasons running directly counter to Harper’s recent assessment. The pitcher grinned widely when Juston Upton’s would-be homer was caught at the wall, but failed to offer similar leeway an inning later, when Evan Gattis intentionally pimped a home run in response. Fernandez one-upped Gattis after hitting his own home run, not only watching it from the box until he was certain the Braves had noticed, but going into a glacial trot around the bases before literally spitting toward third base as he rounded the bag.

None of this, save for Fernandez’s initial grin, had anything to do with celebrating the game.

Which is where Harper’s point hinges. Fernandez could have maintained his hackles and defended his actions afterward, claiming that the Braves started things and that he was only responding. Perhaps it was Atlanta catcher Brian McCann waiting for Fernandez to reach the plate before informing him that he needed to start acting like a big leaguer. Maybe a voice of authority in the pitcher’s own clubhouse set him straight. (Then-manager Mike Redmond went so far as to set up a meeting at which Fernandez apologized to McCann and Mike Minor, the pitcher against whom he homered.)

Either way, Fernandez came clean to reporters in the postgame clubhouse.

“This isn’t high school no more,” he said in an MLB.com report. “This is a professional game, and we should be professional players. I think that never should happen. I’m embarrassed, and hopefully that will never happen again.”

Fernandez was talking not about his joie de vivre—he continues to enjoy himself like a madman on the baseball diamond—but his blatant disrespect of the opposition. To his credit, we haven’t seen anything like that from him since then.

Which brings us back to Harper.

As a former teenage phenom, he’s been picked on by a variety of big league veterans (and even umpires). Sometimes his response has been fine, sometimes less so. Harper’s unprovoked actions have been mostly solid. The guy plays fiery, including his attitude from the sidelines, and teams around the league have come to accept that. Which is as it should be.

It’s a lesson that needs special reinforcement as the game slides further away from a hard line against celebrations: So long as players’ on-field displays are focused inward, guys like Harper and Fernandez should have relatively smooth sailing. Directed at the opposition, however (take Harper’s own scuffing of the Braves logo in 2014, or his behavior after homering off of Hunter Strickland during the playoffs later that season), are a different matter.

It’s an important distinction. There are strong feelings on both sides of the divide—traditionalists who want no part of emotion on the diamond, and those who decry the Code as ancient hokum, unfit for the modern game.

As is usually the case, the truth lies someplace in between. Celebrations are here to stay, but disrespect is as reviled now as it’s ever been. Trouble is, it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish between the two, which is where much of the problem lies.

Baseball is an ever-changing game, as are its unwritten rules. The sport is still feeling its way through this, but with guys like Harper and Fernandez at the helm, it should all work out just fine.

 

 

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Inter-Team Fighting, Veteran Status

Every Story Needs a Bad Guy; This One Has Him – But Not For the Reason You Might Think

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Pap vs. Harp II

Turns out that Jonathan Papelbon’s old-school-vs.-new-school emotional crisis last week was only the beginning. At least then he was hitting members of the opposition.

In the aftermath of his physical assault on Bryce Harper Sunday, caught on TV for all to see, we’re left to digest the complex implications of not only what happened, but why.

After Harper failed to run out trotted slowly to first on an eighth-inning popup to left field (but still plenty fast enough to make it if the ball was dropped), Papelbon began railing on his lack of hustle before the guy even made it back to the dugout. When Harper failed to exhibit the kind of subservience one can only assume Papelbon expected a 22-year-old to pay a veteran of his stature, the closer went for his throat, literally. (Watch it here.)

Over at Fox, former pitcher C.J. Nitkowski makes the case, citing unnamed current and former big leaguers, that it was Harper in the wrong, that young players in baseball must pay emotional servitude to their seniors, as it is and as it has always been.

There’s something to this. Rookies who watch quietly tend to absorb more than those whose energy is spent making their own voices heard. For generations, upstart rookies were not allowed to exist in a big league atmosphere; veterans worked tirelessly to tamp them down until they were no longer noisy. That’s no longer so. Part of it is top-tier signing bonuses that put many young players on comparable financial footing with veteran teammates. Part of it is players being rushed to the big leagues earlier and earlier, making them more prevalent to the overall culture than ever. Part of it is the collective realization that stifling one’s teammates is simply not a productive use of one’s time.

That, though, is not the real issue.

What Nitkowski fails to acknowledge in his treatise is that clubhouse standing is not based purely on seniority. Veteran status plays a part in it, of course, and by that measure Papelbon, with his 11 years in the big leagues and 34 years on the planet, has it all over Harper.

Production, however, trumps seniority. Harper has made three All-Star teams in his four years in the league, and has already earned more MVP votes than Papelbon ever did. He’s the best player not just on the Nationals but damn well in all of baseball.

Papelbon, on the other hand, has been with the Nationals for all of two months. If anybody gets traded over this incident, it’s not going to be Harper. By this measure—which is more real than whatever hokum Papelbon or his defenders want to spin about veteran status—Harper wins in a landslide.

That, though, isn’t the real issue, either.

Evidence points toward Papelbon’s anger stemming from Harper’s decision to go public with his frustration over the closer drilling Manny Machado last week, telling the press that the closer’s actions were “pretty tired,” and that “I’ll probably get drilled tomorrow.”

In that much Papelbon is correct: Those kinds of comments are better delivered behind closed doors than in a public forum. Had Harper sat Papelbon down for a heart-to-heart about the nature of baseball and how much it hurts to get drilled in retaliation for a teammate’s ill-considered actions, things between the two might never have reached the critical state they eventually did.

But even that is not the real issue.

For somebody sticking to his guns about the way things ought to be, Papelbon failed both himself and his old-school proponents. In drilling Machado for showboating, the closer could cite historical precedence; ballplayers of yore did it all the time, and by gum the game was better then, and etc. But even if we ignore the big picture that tells us that’s no longer the case—not to mention the fact that a reticence to evolve is one of the most damning characteristics a person or organization can foster—it’s impossible to miss Papelbon conveniently ignoring as solid a tenet as baseball’s unwritten rules contain: Don’t throw at a guy’s head.

Had Papelbon drilled Machado in the thigh or in the ass instead of sending two pitches above his shoulders, there’s a good chance that Harper would not have said anything at all. And had Harper not said anything, Papelbon would have had little reason to extend his vendetta to his own damn dugout. And therein we find the crux of the issue.

The hypocrisy.

The hypocrisy of players hiding behind semi-formed tenets of decorum while conveniently ignoring their own culpability in a given matter. (And never mind Papelbon’s postscript lip-service statement, “I’m in the wrong there,” delivered without a smidgen of guilt.)

The hypocrisy of meathead pitchers trying to leverage the unwritten rules to bolster their own macho need to exact a toll whenever they can, wherever they are, while claiming the moral high ground.

The hypocrisy of somebody shutting out every detail of a situation save for the ones that bolster his own point of view.

The American sporting public is a forgiving crowd, but only when we’re certain we’re not being played. Athletes are given second and third and fourth chances, provided they’re honest about whatever it was that plagued them in the first place. Jonathan Papelbon will never come out and say that he dislikes Bryce Harper for his combination of youth and ability and earning potential and clubhouse leadership at an age when Papelbon himself was pitching in the short-season Class-A league in Lowell, Mass.

Sure, Harper might be grating. Many stars are. Their status affords them that leeway. Papelbon, however, refuses to acknowledge that status, and couches it however he can to validate his actions.

It’s a weak mindset, and goes a long way toward explaining the abundance of burned bridges the closer has left in his wake. Most good stories need a hero to save the day. This one has only a villain, but at least it’s enough to keep things interesting.

Update, 9-28: The Nationals seem to agree, suspending Papelbon for what amounts to the duration of the season.

10
Walk Around the Catcher on the Way to the Plate

Scuff the Dirt, Bryce, but Make Sure to Watch Where you Walk

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Bryce Harper drew some attention Saturday when he intentionally (and repeatedly) scuffed the Braves logo that had been imprinted in the dirt behind the plate at Turner Field in Atlanta. On one hand, it was just a bit of gamesmanship, intended to get Atlanta’s goat. On the other he was clearly disrespecting the home team. Ultimately, the gesture was so minor that it should serve as fuel for Braves fans, but not the Braves themselves.

It did bring to mind, however, an interesting piece of Code which might be the single most arcane and widely followed, both at the same time. While other antiquated unwritten rules, like “Don’t swing at the first pitch after back-to-back homers” have fallen nearly entirely off the map, this one, while just as quaint, continues to be ubiquitous. Harper himself was following it, even as he set about being bratty to the Braves.

It’s a simple one: Don’t walk between the pitcher and the catcher when you’re going up to hit—walk around. This almost never causes a commotion, because it’s almost never done. It’s as close to instinctive on the baseball landscape as the unwritten rules can get.

“It’s just bad etiquette to walk in front of the catcher,” said former A’s infielder and current A’s analyst Shooty Babbit. “It’s like breaking the rhythm of the game. You want to creep into the batter’s box; you don’t want to create any attention. You don’t want to give them any more incentive to get you out.”

Dusty Baker learned about it from Hank Aaron when he was coming up with the Braves. “He taught us to walk behind the umpire all the time,” he said. “Not so much for the rhythm of the game, but that it’s their territory, not yours.” Baker talked about the action showing respect for both catcher and umpire.

A poll of current major leaguers would probably draw more blank stares than anything, but one would be hard-pressed to find a guy who makes a practice of doing anything else.

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Don't Play Aggressively with a Big Lead, Jayson Werth, Swinging 3-0

Some Leads are Insurmountable; Others are Insurmountable Only for the Cubs

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Opinions about when it is and isn’t appropriate to play aggressively—stealing bases, say, or swinging 3-0—vary widely. When you’re the Chicago Cubs and are in the midst of getting pummeled, repeatedly, by the best team in the National League, it only makes sense that sensitivities might be a bit raw.

The game in question was the capper following three straight Nationals victories over Chicago, by a cumulative score of 22-7—“one of the biggest butt-whippings” Cubs manager Dale Sveum said he’d ever received. Ultimately, it served mainly to add misery to a season which at that point had the Cubs on pace to lose 102 games.

In the series’ fourth game, on Thursday, it took only four innings for Washington to build another substantial lead, 7-2, so when Jayson Werth swung at a 3-0 pitch with the bases loaded and two outs in the fifth, it was enough to officially drive Cubs bench coach Jamie Quirk into an extreme state of annoyance.

From the dugout, he started “screaming out obscenities” toward Washington third-base coach Bo Porter, according to umpire Jerry Layne in the Chicago Tribune, a situation the umpire felt “was inappropriate” and “caused everything.”

“Everything” began with Porter approaching the Chicago bench and screaming right back at Quirk. That escalated to both dugouts emptying onto the field. (Watch it here.)

“You’re up 7-2,” said Cubs catcher Steve Clevenger. “You don’t swing 3-0.”

There’s truth to the statement, but its timing is straight out of the 1960s. The last time the fifth inning was utilized as a yardstick for when to stifle an attack, it was a pitcher’s league. They were the days of Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson, long before offenses exploded in a spate of expanded rosters and juiced balls and tiny ballparks and BALCO-fueled hitters. Today, the fifth inning sounds downright quaint.

Then again, this is the Cubs. The line for when to call off the dogs is malleable, depending on a team’s bench and bullpen, the freshness of its starting pitcher, the state of its offense. With the Cubs, for whom a two-run deficit might seem like an unbridgeable chasm, perhaps five runs, and only four innings to score them, is a  lot.

We’ve already established that their emotions are raw, which explains why reliever Lendy Castillo threw at Bryce Harper to lead off the the sixth. That set Harper off on his own shouting jag, and the dugouts emptied again. (Watch it here.)

Harper nailed it in his postgame comments, saying in the Tribune, “I’d be pretty ticked off if I was getting my teeth kicked in all week, too.”

Nationals manager Davey Johnson proved to be tone deaf earlier this season when it came to a different facet of the game’s propriety, but on this particular issue he was pretty much spot-on.

“We’re in a pennant race, we’re going to swing 3-0, we’re going to do everything,” he said in the Washington Post. “We ain’t stopping trying to score runs. Certainly a five-run lead at that time is nothing. I think it was the bench coach’s frustration in us handing it to them for a couple days. If they want to quit competing and forfeit, then fine. But we’re going to keep competing. I don’t know why they’re getting on about swinging 3-0. Their first baseman [Anthony Rizzo] swung 3-0 in the first inning. What’s the difference with the bases loaded in the fifth with only a five-run lead and two outs?”

At this point in the game’s history, not much. “Only” a five-run lead is exactly that, even against the Cubs. One would hope that next time they display a bit more pride.

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Angel Hernandez, Bryce Harper, Umpire Relations

Harper Learning the Rookie Ropes, by Hook or by Crook

Posted on by Jason Turbow
Harper reacts to a called strike three.

This was to be the year of Trout and Harper, Harper and Trout, wonderkind rookies primed to change the face of baseball—and in late spring and early summer, it was.

It’s still the year of Mike Trout, of course. Bryce Harper, though: not so much. His high-water mark was a .307 batting average on June 12; three games later he went 0-for-7 against the Yankees, with five strikeouts, and has hit .210 over the 49 games since, with only three homers. Since the All-Star break, he’s batting .176.

Harper has been baseball’s most touted prospect since he was 16 years old, and now, for what may be the first time in his life, he’s scuffling in a significant way.

In the fourth inning of Wednesday’s game against the Astros, he took a two-strike pitch, low and outside from Armando Galarraga—“catcher Carlos Corporan’s mitt nearly scraped the dirt,” reported the Washington Post—so certain it was a ball that he stepped back into the box. Plate ump Angel Hernandez called it strike three.

Harper got into Hernandez’s face, shouting and pointing, and had to be physically removed by first base coach Trent Jewett.

It was a reaction borne of frustration, likely as much about Harper’s own struggles as Hernandez’s strike zone. The ump didn’t come close to ejecting the rookie (“Let him have his say—nothing wrong with that,” Hernandez told a pool reporter after the game) but it’s possible that the display affected his outlook toward Harper’s ensuing at-bats.

Umpires vociferously reject the notion that they ever test rookies in creative ways—denying them close calls as a means of putting them into their place, letting them know from the get-go who holds the power on a baseball diamond—but their ranks have long been accused of doing exactly that.

Former catcher Randy Knorr tells a story about Wade Miller’s first major league start, with the Houston Astros in 1999. He was struggling against the Arizona Diamondbacks, and plate umpire Rich Rieker wasn’t giving him any close calls. Miller was 22 years old, and was becoming increasingly frustrated at his inability to get a break from Rieker.

“[Miller] throws one pitch right down the middle and it’s called a ball,” said Knorr. “I throw the ball back out there and he’s looking in at the umpire. I say, ‘Hold on,’ and I call time out and run out to the mound. I said, ‘Wade, man, just get through today. If you get through today, you’ll be fine. Just don’t show up the umpire. He’s testing you. I’m trying to work him back there, so don’t be snapping the ball on him or anything like that.’ ”

Miller did as instructed, and though his day didn’t go well—he gave up seven runs in three innings and took the loss—when he walked past Rieker on his way off the field, the arbiter said, “Good job, Wade.”

In the sixth inning Wednesday, when Hernandez called a strike against Harper on another low, outside pitch—which would have been ball four from reliever Xavier Cedeno—it smacked of a similar type of rookie baiting. Harper had showed up the ump in the fourth by so publicly questioning his strike zone. This time the bases were loaded, and Harper had already started jogging to first; when he heard Hernandez’s strike call, he was sufficiently disbelieving as to take a few more steps.

Now the count was full, and Cedeno’s next pitch was again low and away. Again Harper watched it. Again it was called a strike. From the Post:

Harper cocked his bat with one hand, as if he was going to throw it, then restrained himself. He chucked his helmet and tossed his bat, and as he ripped his batting gloves off in the middle of the diamond he shook his head.

The calls were so questionable, and Harper so visibly upset, that Nationals first baseman Adam LaRoche checked in with Hernandez after the inning, the obvious on his mind. “I said, ‘What’s going on? From where I’m at, those balls are down.’ ” he said. “[Hernandez] assured me that they were good pitches. He said he would never do that to Bryce, he loves him, he loves the way he plays and that there’s no kind of initiation there. He called it the way he would call it to anybody.”

La Roche, a 9-year vet, has seen this kind of thing before. Without saying as much, he made it obvious that he felt like he recognized exactly what was going on.

“I’ve been in that position,” he said after the game. “I’ve talked to Bryce a lot about it. I said, ‘You’ve got to keep your mouth shut, but at some point, if it gets really bad, you’ve got to stand up for yourself and not sit there and take it.’ ”

Harper is still trying to figure that one out. Speaking the following day about Hernandez’s expanded zone, he said, “When you have to chase a 2-1 fastball two inches off, it’s not fun.”

The Post cited FanGraphs.com stats showing that only 40 percent of the pitches Harper has seen since the All-Star break have been in the strike zone (27th lowest in the majors), and he’s swung and missed at fewer than 30 percent of those (and at 8.5 percent of his pitches overall). These are good numbers, not usually aligned with a guy who’s striking out more than 22 percent of the time.

An umpiring conspiracy to deliver some humility to the guy who wore gold cleats in the All-Star Game as a teenager? A longshot, at best. But the notion that individual umps view Harper just a bit differently than they do other players around the league is not so far-fetched, especially considering the media hype that followed him through the first half of the season. Knowing one’s place in the baseball hierarchy has always been of vital importance to many of those involved in the game, and umpires are no exception.

If such calls are indeed intentional, each is only a small factor in putting Harper in his place. Cumulatively, however, they’re having an effect. Whether or not they’re just, there’s little doubt that the lessons Harper is learning today will be of use later in his career.

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Cheating, Pine Tar

‘To My Hero, Ozzie. Love You,’ Sincerely, Bryce Harper

Posted on by Jason Turbow

After Sunday’s Ozzie Guillen–Bryce Harper Hey, Are You Showing Me Up? staredown, some members of the Nationals brought a touch of levity to the situation.

On Monday, Edwin Jackson and Adam LaRoche had Harper sign a bat (not an unusual request in a big league clubhouse), then, without his knowledge, added the phrase “To my hero, Ozzie. Love you.” After slathering it with pine tar, and also without Harper’s knowledge, they sent it down the hall to the Marlins clubhouse as a sort of twisted peace offering.

(Why those two players? Jackson played under Guillen with the White Sox, and LaRoche—whose father, Dave, was a White Sox coach when Guillen played for them—has known the Miami manager since childhood. Both obviously harbor some fondness for the guy.)

Guillen received the bat with a laugh. The incident had already started to fade, but this was as happy a bow as one could have put on it. Still, not every such gesture is taken so lightly.

In 1987, after Mets slugger Howard Johnson had homered twice against St. Louis in two days, Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog suggested that corked bats might be involved. Johnson was in the midst of a breakout year—he had never hit more than 12 homers in any of his five major league seasons to that point, but his second blast against the Cardinals, on July 31, was his 26th in about four months. Herzog had the umpires check Johnson’s bat, which they determined to be clean.

It took just three days before Johnson found the perfect opportunity to respond. The Mets had wrapped up a series in Montreal, leaving town on Aug. 2. The next team to visit Olympic Stadium was none other than the Cardinals.

Knowing this, Johnson conspicuously left a bat in the visitors’ clubhouse, adorned with 20 wine corks dangling from strings. St. Louis pitcher Bill Dawley, who had served up one of Johnson’s home runs the previous week, wasn’t laughing.

“Very funny,” he said when the bat was discovered. “He’s going to get drilled.”

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