WASHINGTON -- There are times when giving Bryce Harper a day off might seem like a no-brainer. Today wasn't one of those times.
Sure, Harper's been cold. Before today, he had four hits in his past 28 at-bats. Over the past month, he was hitting just .184 with two homers and eight RBIs, and he had more K's than a Finnish phone book (25 in 76 at-bats). So Dusty Baker decided he would give his star right fielder a "mental day off," as he described it prior to Wednesday's finale between the Washington Nationals and New York Mets.
Then Baker had to sit on his hands while rookie Steven Matz carved up his Harper-less lineup to the tune of four hits over eight shutout innings en route to a 2-0 Mets victory that gave the visitors a series win and pulled them to within a half-game of the first place Nationals in the National League East.
Surely, that had to be hard to handle.
"It was tough to sit Bryce," said the Nats' skipper after the game. "But you gotta sit him sometime."
At least that is Baker's philosophy, although some might beg to differ. Take Manny Machado, for example. The 23-year-old Baltimore Orioles star is the same age as Harper and plays a more demanding position. He has started every game since the beginning of the 2015 season, and it hasn't affected his production. Last year, Machado finished fourth in the voting for American League MVP, and if the 2016 season ended today, he'd be the odds-on favorite to win the thing. So if we're talking about days off just for the sake of days off, you could argue that Harper would be just fine going without. If we're talking about days off as a means of snapping out of a ferocious funk, well, that's a different story.
Prior to Wednesday's finale, Baker talked about his superstar's slump and how it was just a matter of time before he snapped out of it. Inevitably, the cream rises to the top, he said. And he's right. The question is, given that this series finale was about as important as a May game can be, did Harper need a mental day off to catalyze the cream or would it have found its way to the top without his manager's meddling? If history is any indication, the half-and-half likely would've gotten whole all by itself.
Heading into Wednesday's game, Harper was hitting .246. The last time the reigning MVP had an average that low was on May 5, 2015, when he took an 0-for-4 against Miami that dropped his average to .245 and extended his skid to 1-for-17 at the time. The following day, the cream rose in the form of three home runs off Marlins starter Tom Koehler. The explosion started a 22-for-39 streak that raised his average 93 points in 12 days to .338, where it more or less stayed for the rest of the season.
It's worth noting that Harper's three-bomb game against Miami was a 1:05 p.m. start, just like today's game against New York. It's also worth noting that Harper's career OPS during day games (.959) is significantly higher than during night games (.881) and that this season the difference is, well, night and day (1.237 day; .802 night). In other words, as good as Harper is under the lights, he's even better under the sun. And that's just one reason why it might have made sense for Harper to be in the lineup.
Here are a few others:
With the weather finally starting to warm up after a miserable spring in D.C., the ball seems to be carrying. On Tuesday, with the game time temp in the 80s for the first time all season, the Nats went deep five times. On Wednesday, it was 83 degrees at first pitch. That there is slump-bustin' weather.
Even though nobody would ever confuse Matz (a left-handed former first-rounder who has the look of a future ace) with Koehler (an 18th-round righty whom Harper has owned over the years), and even though sitting lefty hitters against tough southpaws is common practice, the reigning MVP does just fine, thanks, against lefties (.973 OPS versus LHPs since start of 2015).
The announced sellout crowd featured several thousand school kids who arrived early at Nats Park for the team's annual Weather Day and who likely had trouble sleeping the night before because they were so geeked about the prospect of watching baseball's CFO (Chief Fun Officer) do his thing, live and in person.
Of course, that last reason has absolutely nothing to do with Baker. It's not his job to appease the wants and needs of the masses who pass through the turnstiles. However, it is his job to win ballgames. And you could certainly argue that with Harper in the 3-hole, Washington's odds of winning would have been significantly greater, slump or no slump.
Then again, the last time Baker gave the face of the franchise a day off, things worked out OK, as Harper hit a game-tying pinch-hit homer in the ninth inning of an April game that the Nats went on to win in extras. But that was a relatively meaningless interleague game against the hapless Twins. This was the rubber match of a divisional showdown against the defending NL champs. As much as that may sound like a war to most, to hear Baker tell it, it was just another battle.
"It was a thing where you don't really sacrifice a game necessarily, but you're hoping that one game will pay dividends for the next 10 to 15 games," said Washington's manager after the loss. "This is what you hope. The guys that are out there, I got full confidence in whoever I put out there to do the job."
Of course, the last time Harper sat, the guys that Baker put out there made him look like a genius. Matt den Dekker, who started for Harper in right field, homered to lead off the game against Minnesota. And Chris Heisey, who replaced Harper in the lineup after his pinch-hit jack, ended up winning the game with a walk-off dinger in the 16th inning.
On Wednesday, it was a different story. Heisey -- who got the nod in right -- went hitless in two at-bats, with a walk. He wasn't the only sub that underwhelmed. Michael Taylor, filling in for red-hot leadoff man Ben Revere, went 1-for-4 and was thrown out easily trying to steal following his third-inning single.
Not that the reserves were the reason Washington lost. Bryce Harper or no Bryce Harper, Matz was dominant on Wednesday. He has now won seven straight starts. Bryce or no Bryce, Daniel Murphy booted a routine grounder in the seventh that would have been an inning-ending double play but instead led to the second Mets run. And then there's Harper himself, who represented the tying run when he came up to pinch-hit in the bottom of the eighth with two down and a runner on, only to end the threat by grounding out to second.
So much for that mental health day.
Then again, Baker is all about seeing the forest. Delayed gratification. He knows these things take time. He talked pregame about all the extra hitting work that Harper's been doing and how it can take 24 to 48 hours for muscle memory to sink in. Postgame, he talked about how Harper's lazy Wednesday could pay dividends this weekend when the Cardinals come to town for a four-game set.
"Hopefully, this day off will help Bryce big-time come the St. Louis series," said Baker, who plans on giving some other regulars a blow soon too. "There's a couple guys that I think need days off to keep 'em strong through the course of the year. I didn't want to sit Bryce and a couple guys against St. Louis, and I wasn't gonna sit Bryce against the Phillies in that little bandbox. And then we go to another bandbox from there in Cincinnati, so when I started adding up things, I figured that against a tough lefty, this was the day to sit him. And then after that we play the White Sox, where I can give some other guys days off and let 'em DH, maybe including Bryce."
In other words, there's a method to the managerial madness.
"I'm looking not only at the schedule today," said Baker, "but I'm looking at the schedule for the next 10 days, which I always do."
Only time will tell if he's looking in the right place.