{"id":8763,"date":"2014-08-06T18:38:27","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T22:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/?p=8763"},"modified":"2014-08-06T18:38:27","modified_gmt":"2014-08-06T22:38:27","slug":"nationals-will-not-send-bryce-harper-to-triple-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/2014\/08\/06\/nationals-will-not-send-bryce-harper-to-triple-a\/","title":{"rendered":"Nationals will not send Bryce Harper to Triple-A"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nSending Bryce Harper to Triple-A is not an option for the Washington Nationals according to manager Matt Williams.<\/p>\n

“Bryce Harper\u2019s one of the guys on our team. He\u2019s a very important part of our team. Just like everybody else is. Do we understand each other? It\u2019s not fair to the kid, it\u2019s not fair to the other guys in that clubhouse, to even think about sending Bryce Harper to the minor leagues, or to cause a stir. It\u2019s unacceptable. It won\u2019t happen.” said Williams to reporters on Wednesday via Nats Insider<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Though 52 games this season the 21-year-old Harper is hitting just .249\/.333\/.359 with three home runs and 14 RBI.<\/p>\n

Asked if sending Harper to Syracuse for a week or so was a bad idea the manager was less committal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Williams replied. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s stupid. Generally, if you have young players, that\u2019s what you do. But this guy is a special young player. We all know that. It\u2019s different. I think he works hard every day. He\u2019s the first one in the ballpark, generally, to get his day going. He\u2019s grinding. We\u2019re doing everything we can to get a good feel going in there and help him with his confidence and all that. It\u2019s not easy, by any stretch. But I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s a good idea at this point to do that, because it\u2019s completely different pitching. We all know the big difference between Triple-A pitching and big-league pitching. It\u2019s probably more of an option to have him feel good here, get it back. We\u2019ve seen him, certainly, good and hitting well. For me, it\u2019s not necessarily that he can\u2019t hit, of course. It is that he\u2019s in some kind of a slump. What we have to do is try to work our way through it and get him out of it as quickly as possible. He grinds every day, you guys. He\u2019s doing everything we can to get out of it, and so are we.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harper’s play has taken a drastic downturn since his stint on the disabled list last June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sending Bryce Harper to Triple-A is not an option for the Washington Nationals according to manager Matt Williams. “Bryce Harper\u2019s one of the guys on our team. He\u2019s a very important part of our team. Just like everybody else is. Do we understand each other? It\u2019s not fair to the kid, it\u2019s not fair to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[499],"tags":[83,501,20],"coauthors":[6],"class_list":{"0":"post-8763","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-bryce-harper","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-washington-nationals"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8763"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8765,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8763\/revisions\/8765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8763"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}