Harper and Gonzalez play workhorses in series-opening 5-0 win

CINCINNATI - So much for the notion that Bryce Harper could benefit from a day off because he was tired from all of the festivities surrounding the All-Star Game in Miami. Harper passed when offered the chance to take a breather in the opener of a four-game series against the Reds and the Nationals are glad he did.

Harper supplied the bulk of the offense - homering twice and driving in three runs at hitter-friendly Great American Ball Park, where he had previously only hit one longball, a two-run shot in 2013 - to back a sterling 8 1/3 innings of shutout ball from left-hander Gio Gonzalez in a 5-0 victory over the Reds on Friday night.

Things got a little hairy once Gonzalez departed after getting Joey Votto to sky to left for the first out of the ninth. Matt Albers got an out but loaded the bases, and Matt Grace came on to get a one-pitch save, inducing a grounder that Stephen Drew snagged on a dive to retire Tucker Barnhart for the final out.

"That was as sharp as I've seen (Gonzalez) and the longest," manager Dusty Baker said. "He kept his sharpness and he had an outstanding breaking ball. He located his fastball well, threw an occasional changeup. This is a tough offensive team he faced in a very short ballpark. You never really feel comfortable here. You can really reach the fences and they've got quite a few guys over there who can reach the fences. Yeah, that was outstanding for Gio. I thought that was long enough because we need him for, I don't know, 15 or 20 more starts, hopefully. He was very good tonight."

Two-out RBI singles by Drew and Anthony Rendon in the first got the Nationals a quick 2-0 lead and Harper followed with his 21st and 22nd homers of the season. He mashed a no-doubter to right in the third after Wilmer Difo led off with a single and led off the fifth with a mammoth solo shot to center for a 5-0 cushion.

"Even without the early runs, you got to still keep your team as close as possible," said Gonzalez. "That's a good hitting team. Any inning they can put up three, four runs just like that. You saw there with two outs (in the ninth), it got a little crowded, but it just goes to show you that that's not a team that's just going to walk away and chop this one up. They were still fighting to the end."

But while Gonzalez was on the mound, the Reds were powerless to do much of anything. He yielded four hits - three of them infield singles to Rendon at third - and pitched around the occasional baserunner. Gonzalez walked two and struck out six, and thought he might have been done after eight innings and 109 pitches, based on the way he was high-fiving his teammates in the dugout.

"I didn't know I was going out for the ninth," he said. "I was high-fiving our team. The players did a great job. And then all of a sudden, 'Keep your guard up. You might be going out there for one more.' And lo and behold, I was out there for one more."

The fact that Baker trusted him to go out in the ninth when he was almost spent meant something to the veteran southpaw.

"It does. It does mean a lot to me," he said. "Especially with that team. The Reds is a great hitting team. They can swing the bat. A lot of those guys, if you look at their home run list, a lot of their guys have hit 20 home runs. You got to also give them credit. They know how to swing the bat when they need to. I was just trying to keep the ball down and follow Matty's idea. Matt Wieters, he had the gameplan that he wanted and we stuck by it and I just followed his lead."

Gonzalez benefited from his share of good defense, too. In the first inning after Billy Hamilton had beaten out an infield single, Rendon started an around-the-horn double play that got the speedster back in the dugout. With two on and two out in the fourth, center fielder Brian Goodwin made a diving grab to end the inning and prevent José Peraza from plating a run or two.

And he also got some offensive firepower from Harper, who told Baker he was ready to answer the bell - and made his manager glad he wrote his name into the lineup.

"I want to stay in the lineup," Harper said. "Every single day I'm in there, I can do something. Do damage. If I'm not in there, I possibly could have got a ribbie or hit a homer or something like that. If I had the day off today, I wouldn't have hit the two homers that I wanted to hit."

Baker will get Harper his day off, perhaps wrapped around an off-day next week to effectively give the slugger two days of respite. But Baker is more and more comfortable with the notion that the Nationals, regardless of which names he writes into his lineup card at whichever positions, will figure out a way to get the job done.

"Man, we have depth and we're not afraid to use it," Baker said. "Whoever we put out there, we think they're gonna do the job. We've lost, what, 30 percent of our starting lineup this year and a couple extra guys after that? But these guys don't make any excuses. They don't alibi. They just go play. This is how you'd like them to be."

Said Harper: "All year long, we've tried to put some runs up there on the board and Gio took care of business tonight, throwing pitches over the plate. He tried to pound the strike zone as best he could and he did that to the best of his ability tonight. Got him some runs early and to put up a zero in this ballpark by Gio, that's pretty tough. A good job by him."