Harper-Strickland clash ends with clobbered HR

WASHINGTON -- Bryce Harper and Hunter Strickland sure have a thing going, don’t they?

Everybody remembers the benches-clearing brawl involving the two in San Francisco in May 2017, when Strickland hit Harper with a pitch and Harper charged the mound, chucking his helmet at him. Harper homered in his first two career at-bats against Strickland, which Strickland never forgot. They faced each other without incident last season, setting up Harper’s pinch-hit at-bat in the seventh inning Tuesday night in Game 2 of a doubleheader at Nationals Park. Harper crushed a 3-1 fastball into the second deck in right field for a solo home run in a 6-5 loss, which clinched the Nationals a National League Wild Card spot.

“At the end of the day, that homer doesn't matter,” Harper said. “It’s still a 6-5 ballgame. They still got the ‘W.’ They are where they are because of who they are. Of course, you like to hit homers and things like that. But I was standing in the dugout and talking to Rhys [Hoskins] about it, and that’s exactly what I said. Those are the moments that are cool if it’s 7-6 and you tie it up or go ahead, but at the end of the day, they’re still doing what they’re doing over there, and we’re going to get on a bus to go home.”

The ball left Harper’s bat at 116.4 mph, making it the hardest-hit batted ball by Harper since Statcast began tracking in 2015. It is the hardest-hit homer by any Phillies player in that span. Jorge Alfaro previously held the top spot, hitting a homer at 114.5 mph on April 7, 2018.

It was Harper’s 34th homer of the season and the second pinch-hit homer of his career.