Bryce Harper tops in NL All-Star voting and bares all in upcoming Body Issue

The marketing of Bryce Harper?

You better get in line.

News broke Monday that Nationals right fielder will be featured in the upcoming ESPN The Magazine Body Issue.

On Tuesday during pregame with the media, Harper said he was thrilled to be included in the offseason shoot and it was actually something he had hoped to be asked to do.

"Very excited, very happy to be a part of that," Harper said. "It's something I dreamed about since I was younger. It's very cool thing for athletes to show off your bodies from different sports. I'm alongside a lot of great athletes. I'm excited for it to come out.

"You get to see what type of different bodies athletes come into their sport as I look to show off mine for baseball."

Harper posed nude for the photographer and had some say about what kinds of poses they decided to include. Turns out facing 98 mph fastballs may not be so difficult when looking into the lens of a camera without any, well, clothes on.

"We just had a lot of fun doing it," Harper said. "I didn't want to stay baseball oriented, I wanted to do a lot of different stuff.

"A lot of people are going to get a taste of what it is to work out in the offseason and see how hard it is, how rigorous it is to go through an offseason of working out. You'll see that in the whole article and be a lot of fun for a lot of people to see."

Harper said he hasn't heard much from teammates yet on his inclusion in the magazine. But closer Drew Storen joked that maybe the young home run hitter wasn't their first choice on the Nationals.

"Nobody brought up the fact that they asked me to do it first," Storen said. "I passed it up.

"They were worried that they weren't going to have to Photoshop anything. (That was) the main concern."

Storen smiled and said he was proud of Harper being put on that list of athletes that have posed for the Body Issue.

"No, it's going to be cool," Storen said. "It's exciting for him. People have all seen my body, so."

The latest National League All-Star voting numbers are out and Harper is still at the top of the list. He has totaled 9,224,370 votes to lead all National League players in voting for the All-Star Game. Has that and being in the body issue has made him overconfident?

"I have a great team," Harper said. "I have a lot of people around me that support me and I think having the fans that we do it's a lot of fun. We have such a bullseye on our backs this year as a team and as an organization. We're just trying to go out there, have fun and enjoy it. The votes are something that I'm proud of and very proud to have the fans that I do and I owe a lot what the fans come out and do for us every single night and they've done a great job."

Haven't had enough of Harper? OK. Check out this New Era Cap advertisement with supermodel Nina Agdal.

If Harper continues to scorch the baseball, the marketing of Bryce is not going to slow down any time soon. This is only the beginning.