Nats know they must start making teams pay for walking Harper

CHICAGO - They walked him. Then they walked him again.

Then they intentionally walked him.

Then they hit him with a pitch before walking him the next time up.

Which set up another intentional walk, this time with runners on first and second base and two out in a tie game in extra innings.

Which set up yet another intentional walk, also with runners on first and second base and two out in a tie game deeper into extra innings.

Throughout it all, the Cubs made their intention quite clear. They were defying anybody in a Nationals uniform not named Bryce Harper, anybody at all, to beat them.

And when nobody did, they emerged victorious in one of the stranger 4-3 13-inning ballgames venerable Wrigley Field has ever witnessed.

Despite matching the all-time record with six walks in one major league game, Harper wound up on the wrong end of a most frustrating loss at the end of a most frustrating series that saw the Cubs sweep the Nationals over four days, refusing throughout to pitch to the reigning MVP.

"You know how good he is; why tempt fate right there?" Chicago manager Joe Maddon told reporters afterward. "Now if the other guy gets you, that's fine. You have no problem with that whatsoever. I know (Harper) has not been as hot as he can be coming into this series, but you don't want to get him hot. I've been part of that in the past. So we did what we thought we had to do today, and it happened to work."

It worked because the guy behind Harper in the Nationals lineup simply could not make the most of all his opportunities to punish the Cubs for their unconventional strategy. Ryan Zimmerman did drive Harper in once, way back in the third inning on a sharp grounder that scooted past third baseman Kris Bryant and rolled toward the left field bullpen.

But he made an out in each of his six other plate appearances that followed Harper successfully reaching base. Three of those six opportunities came with the bases loaded, including in the 10th and 12th innings.

All told, Zimmerman stranded a staggering 14 men on base on an afternoon when any one of those men crossing the plate would have won the game for the Nationals.

"I can't blame them for walking him," said Zimmerman, a career .282 hitter currently sporting a .236 batting average through 26 games played. "He's one of the best, if not the best player on the planet right now, and it doesn't matter if it's me behind him or anybody behind him. They're going to take their chances with someone else. It's up to me for the rest of the year to come through, and ... I look forward to having more opportunities like that."

Harper, for his part, shrugged off the Cubs' strategy, insisting this has happened to him before, in high school and junior college when his talent level dwarfed anybody else on the field.

Maybe so, but this has rarely happened to anybody at the big league level. Barry Bonds never drew six walks in a game. Neither did Babe Ruth or Ted Williams. The only players in history to do it prior to Harper were Jimmie Foxx in 1936, Andre Thornton in 1984 and Jeff Bagwell in 1999.

"You can't get frustrated, can't get very upset with it," Harper said. "You're on base, and that's what the team asks you to do. So if I can get on base every single time I get up there, then I'm doing it the right way."

Harper very nearly did get on base every single time in this series. He had 19 total plate appearances over the last four days. His final batting line: 1-for-4 with 13 walks (four of them intentional), a hit-by-pitch and a sacrifice fly. His final 12 plate appearances included zero official at-bats. His on-base percentage for the series was .842.

That didn't sit well with everyone in the visiting clubhouse.

"Most of the time you have faith in your pitchers to challenge a guy, but apparently not," said Tanner Roark, who started the game for the Nationals. "I don't know, I'd rather pitch to somebody who is the best, the reigning NL MVP, and feel good about myself and feel great about myself and everybody on my side for doing that. ...

"You can't play scared. This is a game. It's not: 'Here's your free pass,' you know? Sometimes it calls for that, but I think it's scared baseball."

Manager Dusty Baker, who saw firsthand how opposing teams treated Bonds in a similar fashion more than a decade ago, understands it's up to his team to perform and force pitchers to throw to Harper.

"The fans didn't come here to see him walk," the veteran skipper said. "They come here to see him swing the bat. But until we start swinging the bat behind him, that's gonna be the norm."

Baker didn't suggest he intends to make any immediate changes to his lineup, such as swapping Zimmerman with the .395-hitting Daniel Murphy, insisting it was too soon minutes after a game to contemplate such things.

But Baker and others continued to speak glowingly of Zimmerman, who when healthy has been one of baseball's better run producers for a decade but currently boasts a mere 12 RBIs, tied with Danny Espinosa for fifth on the roster.

"You can feel the pressure mounting on Zim," Baker said. "This guy's been a clutch man in this organization for a long time. He's one of the premier clutch men in the game. I'm sure it's killing him. We just have to go back to the drawing board and just keep fighting."

And what if opposing teams continue giving Harper this drastic treatment, simply giving him a free base in every situation of consequence and daring the struggling cleanup hitter to make them pay?

"Perfect," Zimmerman said. "I love it. I hope they do. Last year in the second half, they did that and I had 70-something RBI in 85 games played. So put more people on base and let me come up. Obviously, it didn't go well today, but that's why I play the game, and I look forward to it."