Tanner Roark Declared Cubs Walking Bryce Harper "Scared Baseball"

Bryce Harper reached base 7 times on Sunday without an official at-bat. Twice, in extra innings, the Cubs walked him with bases loaded, to face Ryan  Zimmerman, and the strategy worked both times.

Tanner Roark, who started the game for the Nationals, declared it to be “scared baseball.”

So let’s address the comments first. A sports team is trying to win. Sometimes, decisions dictate that you take certain strategies. Is a team that tries to design plays to go away from or avoid J.J. Watt playing scared football? Or are they being smart? Bryce Harper is in another category by himself–you can question whether loading the bases is the better strategy move, still risking a walk to let in the leading run–but it was a strategy decision.

Teams, and managers, should make strategic decisions. Players, on the other hand, should have the mentality of Tanner Roark. Roark is not Randy Johnson. He does not have a 98-mile an hour fastball. If he didn’t have the mentality to attack hitters, he would not be successful.

So far this year, that mentality is why Roark is having success:

"He has attacked at all moments, for better or worse, challenging hitters, making them beat him. Sometimes they have. The Cubs put a runner in scoring position with fewer than two outs in five of the six innings Roark pitched Sunday. … “Execute pitches. Bear down and don’t give in,” Roark said. “Once you give in, that’s when they attack, so you just have to keep executing pitches and going after them.”"

Pitching in baseball requires supreme confidence. Throwing a ball through a window about 2 feet by 17 inches, with a batter that can hammer it swinging, is not for the weak-minded. There is probably nothing quite as emasculating as having someone else hit a 400-foot bomb off you (maybe a posterized dunk, though that can be just being in the wrong place). A pitcher like Roark needs to have the mentality that they will never give in.

It’s not scared baseball to strategically decide what to do with Bryce Harper. But you want your pitcher to have that mentality, and let someone else make that decision.