Bryce Harper Calls Andrelton Simmons' Rough Slide "B.S."

Andrelton Simmons made a late, awkward slide into Nationals third baseman Yunel Esocbar during Monday night’s game in Atlanta. Later in the game, Washington threw behind Simmons, thus meeting baseball’s daily quota for these sort of pointless macho head games. The kick slide knocked the ball out of the glove and cut Escobar’s hand.

Afterward, the Nationals players, namely Bryce Harper, took exception with Simmons’ slide, saying via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Andrelton plays with a lot of energy, but that was a B.S. play. That slide was definitely uncalled for.” Ian Desmond said that a slide like that wasn’t playing the game the “right way.”

Atlanta manager Fredi Gonzalez admitted it was a late slide, “But there was nothing malicious about it.”

The line between playing “hard” or “dirty” is continually confusing. In this case Simmons’ slide falls mostly in the middle, if a shade toward reckless instead of dirty.

Throwing behind Simmons, as Rafael Martin did, doesn’t exactly help matters even if it does stand up for your teammate.

Due to baseball’s division-heavy, unbalanced schedule — Atlanta and Washington play five more series after this one in 2015 — so figure that moments like this will linger all the way until September. As we know, Harper in particular doesn’t have any love lost for the Braves.

Bigger picture: The Nationals, whom were assumed to be a 100-win team in the offseason, are off to a slow start and lost their sixth straight game on Monday — the longest streak of any kind in baseball currently. Perhaps that helped exacerbate some of the feelings toward Simmons’ slide.