PHILADELPHIA -- Bryce Harper homered in the first inning on Wednesday night in Milwaukee, and the Brewers walked him the next three times he batted.

The walks made Phillies fans nervous.

They worry that other teams will follow suit and pitch around Harper more frequently in the season’s final 23 games. It will make sense if they do. Harper has been baseball’s best hitter for more than two months, batting .338 with 15 home runs, 42 RBIs and a 1.153 OPS in 57 games since July 4. Nobody has a higher OPS in that span.

“I think teams have always pitched him carefully because of his ability to hit the ball out of the ballpark,” Phillies manager Joe Girardi said before Thursday night’s game against the Rockies at Citizens Bank Park. “And that happens, but guys behind him are going to have to make them pay.”

Harper hit third in each of those 57 games, which means the onus falls on the Phillies’ cleanup hitters. Cleanup hitters across baseball this season are batting .252 with a .452 slugging percentage. Phillies cleanup hitters since July 4 have batted .260 with a .512 slugging percentage, which is better than league average.

But those numbers have dipped since Aug. 25, when Rhys Hoskins played his final game of the season. Phillies cleanup hitters since then have batted .265 with a .449 slugging percentage, which is below league average. The Phillies have used four cleanup hitters in that stretch: J.T. Realmuto (seven times), Andrew McCutchen (five times), Didi Gregorius (once) and Brad Miller (once).

Miller hit cleanup on Thursday.

“Sometimes we talk about all the pressure on the guy behind him,” Girardi said. “It’s also on the guys in front of him to get on because you got first and second, you don’t want to just walk him to get bases loaded or that sort of thing. So that guy on first is really important.”

Harper has walked 45 times and struck out 41 times in his last 57 games. He is showing tremendous patience at the plate.

“I think he’s done a really good job of not getting frustrated,” Girardi said. “We’ve seen him remain patient and have good swings and swing at strikes and take his walks when he needs to, so I think he’s handled it extremely well, actually, and we need that to continue because we don’t need to give people outs.

“You take [the walks] as a compliment and you understand that if that’s what’s going to happen, that’s what’s going to happen and there’s not a whole lot I can do about it.”

Realmuto gets a break
Realmuto did not start on Thursday. Girardi said he needed a break, but he expects Realmuto to play the rest of the Rockies series. Realmuto has been playing with a sore right shoulder, but Girardi maintains it has not affected him offensively or defensively. Realmuto is batting .209 with a .639 OPS in 25 games since Aug. 5.

“He actually feels better,” Girardi said.

Still, is it tough to sit Realmuto for even a game?

“Oh, it’s difficult, but at some point you get diminished returns, right?” Girardi said. “And you hope that giving him a day today maybe freshens him up and he gets hot. We gave [Jean Segura] a day and he came back and got a bunch of hits. That’s kind of the thing. Because you can run people into the ground and as a catcher, obviously your legs take a lot of the brunt and if you don’t have legs as a hitter, it can be difficult.”