Last night, Bryce Harper was angry with the strike zone, and he continued to bench jockey home plate umpire Mark Carlson until he was thrown out of the game. Harper would then literally trip over himself in a fit of rage to give Carlson another piece of his mind. For his part, Gabe Kapler seemed to have Harper’s back by getting into Carlson’s face.

However, just because Kapler seemed to have Harper’s back, it does not mean the team did. In fact, after the game a clearly irritated Jake Arrieta would say, “We need him in right field. I don’t care how bad the umpire is. We need him in right field and he wasn’t there. That hurts.”

Seeing Harper fly off the handle and get ejected, and seeing a pitcher attack him, Mets fans are brought back to the 2015 season. In an infamous moment, the reeling Nationals hit their nadir as hot headed Jonathan Papelbon went to choke Harper in the Nationals dugout. The in over his head manager Matt Williams could offer nothing to keep the team at peace or do what he needed to do to prevent the distractions in the clubhouse affect the performance on the field.

Having watched Harper during his entire career, we have seen an intense player, and we have seen that rub off the wrong way on some people. He had that affect on Papelbon, and he is having that affect on Arrieta. However, to be fair, this is just who Arrieta is. Arrieta didn’t’  save his scorn for Harper. In fact, he would go after the whole team saying:

We have to be ready to play. We weren’t, and it showed.

The dugout was flat. The defense wasn’t good. Didn’t throw the ball well as a staff overall. We got beat. We started at 8:45. I don’t think our guys were ready to play. We’ve got to come out tomorrow ready to play. It’s troubling, yeah. I’m out there doing everything I can to win a game. I need my guys behind me, and they weren’t.

[emphasis added].

If Mets fans close their eyes for a second, they could envision Jon Niese attacking his defense, his catcher, or whoever else was in his path for the loss he took on the night. Really, that is exactly how Arrieta holds himself.

Certainly, those comments were not an accident, and they were not out of character. Last year, after the Phillies lost a series to the Giants, Arrieta said, “I worked too hard for this (stuff). Something has to change. We need some accountability all of the way around. Everybody. From top to bottom. If there is not, I’ll make sure there is.” (USA Today)

In that Phillies clubhouse, there are a number of big personalities, personalities which have rubbed teammates the wrong way in their previous stops. With Harper, we saw with Dusty Baker, it wasn’t an issue, but with lesser managers like Williams, it was. With Arrieta, it wasn’t an issue with Joe Maddon in Chicago. We’ll see about Kapler, a manager who seemingly lost control of his clubhouse last year when Carlos Santana was breaking things in the clubhouse in response to a distracted team playing video games during games.

In the end, it will be up to Harper, Arrieta, and Kapler to either make this a footnote or to allow this to blow up and haunt the team all year. Judging from last year, Kapler may not be up to the task. While no one expects Arrieta to pull a Papelbon and choke Harper, this could be the type of tension which builds to choke the life out of the 2019 Phillies season.