'Why tempt fate?': Remembering Bryce Harper's historic 6-walk game

With baseball on hiatus, it's a good time to look back at great moments from the game's past. Today, we're remembering Bryce Harper's record-setting six-walk effort against the Chicago Cubs on May 8, 2016.

Since bursting onto the scene in 2012 as a much-ballyhooed 19-year-old, Bryce Harper has vacillated endlessly between "good" and "elite," invariably following up an excellent season with a merely solid one. As volatile as his performances may be, though, Harper has always done one thing without fail: walk.

For his career, Harper has walked in 14.7% of his plate appearances. Among live-ball era players with at least 4,500 career trips to the plate, only 42 walked more frequently. As a rookie, Harper posted a walk rate 14% above the league average. The following year, his walk rate was 54% above the league average.

And since breaking out in 2015, when he became the youngest unanimous MVP in baseball history, Harper has walked more frequently - 16.8% of the time - than every qualified hitter except two presumptive future Hall of Famers: Mike Trout and Joey Votto, a pair of plate-discipline paragons. That's what happens when you seldom see pitches in the strike zone and rarely chase pitches.

And on a sunny May afternoon in Chicago back in 2016, Harper's preternatural plate discipline and strike-zone awareness culminated with a historic performance at Wrigley Field.

The reigning NL MVP never lifted the bat off of his shoulder. Harper, who lugged a robust 1.033 OPS into the Washington Nationals' series finale against the Chicago Cubs, reached base seven times that day without swinging the bat once, becoming the first player ever to receive seven plate appearances in a game without recording an official at-bat. He also tied the single-game record for walks with six.

In Harper's first plate appearance, with a runner on first and one out in the top of the first, Jake Arrieta, the reigning NL Cy Young Award winner who had crafted a 0.84 ERA to that point in 2016, walked him on four pitches. Harper didn't see a pitch worth swinging at his next time up, either, taking an elevated sinker for a first-pitch strike before watching four straight balls whizz by. And he didn't even get the chance to swing in his following plate appearance in the top of the fourth, as he was issued an intentional walk with runners on second and third; the Cubs preferred to face Ryan Zimmerman with the bases loaded. (Zimmerman promptly struck out.)

When Harper next came to the plate, with one out and a runner on second in the sixth, Arrieta was gone - replaced by Trevor Cahill - and the Nationals led 3-1. Once again, though, Harper's bat was ornamental, as an errant curveball from Cahill clipped his left toe on the first pitch.

In the eighth, with the game tied, Harper stepped in with two outs and nobody on. Understandably, Cahill erred on the side of caution, sandwiching a called strike between four pitches that were well outside the zone. In each of his next two plate appearances - with two on, two out in both the 10th and 12th - Harper was intentionally walked. Each time, Zimmerman vindicated Cubs manager Joe Maddon by failing to drive in a run.

"(Because of) how good he is, why tempt fate?" Maddon told MLB.com's Jamal Collier following Javier Baez's walk-off solo shot in the bottom of the 13th, which lifted the Cubs to a 4-3 victory and ended the Mother's Day marathon after nearly five hours. "If the other guy gets you, that's fine. You have no problem with that."

All told, Harper saw 27 pitches and offered at none of them.

"I don't need to (swing)," Harper told the Washington Post's Chelsea Janes. "If I can get a pitch down the middle of the plate, I'll swing. If not, then I'm not."

Harper's on-base percentage jumped 32 points that day - from .400 to .432 - while his streak of plate appearances without recording an official at-bat stretched to 11. (The day prior, Harper walked three times and added a sacrifice fly in another 0-for-0 effort.) His performance also helped him set the record for walks in a four-game series with 13 and, again, earned him a spot in a highly exclusive club: only three other players have ever walked six times in a game, and two of them - Jeff Bagwell and Jimmie Foxx - have plaques at Cooperstown.

Players with 6 BBs in a game

Incidentally, in the almost four full seasons since, only six players have walked five times in a single game: Christian Yelich, Matt Holliday, Rougned Odor, Votto, and, of course, Harper.

Harper's six-walk game, as it happens, ended up being the highwater mark of his 2016 campaign. From that day, he slashed just .238/.358/.395, failing to hit for his usual power and ultimately finishing the campaign with a .814 OPS - good, not great; the second-lowest mark of his career.

Thanks in large part, though, to Harper's preposterously patient afternoon in Chicago, no qualified hitter finished with a higher walk rate in 2016.

Jonah Birenbaum is theScore's senior MLB writer. He steams a good ham. You can find him on Twitter @birenball.