Matt Williams: Benching Bryce Harper was ‘Low Point’ of 2014 Season
Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals. (Photo by Jeff Curry/Getty Images)
More from 106.7 the Fan
Audio on Demand
Cheerleader Roundup
5 Dumbest Athletes
Maxim Hot 100WASHINGTON (CBSDC) – The low point of Matt Williams’ first year as Washington Nationals manager, which resulted in NL Manager of the Year honors and an NL East title, came just three weeks into the 2014 season.
Recall April 19, a Saturday game between the Nationals and St. Louis Cardinals, when Williams benched Harper in front of his home crowd in the sixth inning, for running half-speed down the first base line on a one-hopper back to pitcher Lance Lynn.
After the game, Williams made clear his decision was made strictly on the grounds of “lack of hustle.“
Asked after the game why Harper was pulled from the lineup, Williams responded “the inability to run 90 feet,” later specifying it had nothing to do with Harper’s recent quad tightness.
“No. Lack of hustle,” Williams said. “That’s why he came out of the game.”
Williams went into what made benching Harper particularly difficult, in an interview Wednesday with 106.7 The Fan’s Grant Paulsen and Danny Rouhier.
“The situation with Bryce was probably the low point of it, because we had made an agreement as a team that we were gonna do things right — a certain way. And it was their agreement, not mine,” Williams said. “It didn’t come from the manager, it comes from the players and how they want to go about it. So I stand there in the dugout, and, you guys, it could have been anybody. It could have been Jayson, or Desi, or Zimm or Wilson that didn’t give the effort that we all made the agreement to expect. And so, it just happened to be Bryce.”
“The aftermath of all of that was probably the low point because, one, I felt bad for him; two, I wanted to nip it in the bud as quickly as possible and deal with it, but it lingered,” he confessed. “And it was a negative impact, I think, on our club overall from a press perspective and talking about it.”
However, Williams insists that, despite the moment being the low-water mark for him personally as the Nationals’ skipper, he had no regrets about it.
“I just think it was a low point because it was something that became a distraction, if you will,” he maintained. “And we want to play games, and leave the day before the day before, and look next day and try to win that game too.
“It was just a distraction and it didn’t go the way we all anticipated it would go. I think at the end of the day, it was okay. But during that time, it was a little rough, especially for Bryce, [because] this guy’s a special player, you guys. And I had to make that decision at that time, and it just happened to be that Bryce was the guy. So right, wrong, or indifferent, that was probably the point where I went, ‘You know, that didn’t work out the way we wanted it to work out.’”
Nats News And Rumors
