re: Jonathan Papelbon just fought Bryce Harper in the dugout

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There is zero chance whatsoever that, yesterday, Papelbon was taking issue with Harper’s hustle in anything approaching an honest and genuine way. Or that, even if it did bug him as a professional, his reason for calling Harper out publicly about it was in furtherance of baseball ethics. I mean, Papelbon has been around for a long time and he’s played with a LOT of guys who don’t run out fly balls and I can’t recall him ever speaking up about it before. The dude broke in on a team led by David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez for Pete’s sake.

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No, the reason he did so was because last week Bryce Harper took public issue with Papelbon throwing at Manny Machado. Given Papelbon’s lack of a leadership track record, it’s a pretty safe assumption that that what was animating Papelbon. He simply does not say a thing to Harper if not for Harper’s comments. So that requires us — in order to really assess this situation — to take Harper’s comments into consideration.

Those comments were themselves somewhat unorthodox in that, again, they were a public rebuke of a teammate. But they were a correct rebuke. They arguably displayed some leadership. And they were, if one looks at them objectively, possibly even brave.

The Nationals were still mathematically alive last Wednesday night as they took on the Orioles. And they were down by a run in the top of the ninth when Papelbon, quite intentionally, hit Machado. That put a base runner on in a close game and got the Nationals’ best relief pitcher ejected, each of which hurt the team. It likewise put Harper — the Nationals’ best player — at risk of being hit at some point in the near future. Indeed, that was the substance of Harper’s comment. Any player who gets hit could get hurt and having your best player get hurt while you’re still technically alive for a playoff spot is a very, very bad thing. So, on at least three levels, Papelbon did something stupid that hurt his team.

Pointing that sort of thing out is not what a lot of ballplayers do, but Harper was 100% correct in his assessment of Papelbon’s actions and saying so took some guts. It took guts to say, in as conservative a world as baseball is, that perhaps, after 150 years of dumb unwritten rule enforcement, maybe it makes more sense not to put guys at risk of injury with retaliation pitches. Maybe, to quote, Harper, he’s not alone in thinking such things are “tired.” And if he’s not alone, maybe his saying so will inspire more players to be more vocal about it. Maybe, several years from now, more people speaking up about that sort of thing like Harper did will lead to a game in which guys don’t throw 93 m.p.h. fastballs at people’s heads because they don’t like the cut of the batters’ jib. If so, Harper, perhaps unwittingly, will have proven himself to be something of a leader.

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