Nationals' Lineup: Dusty Baker swaps Daniel Murphy, Ryan Zimmerman behind Bryce Harper

Ryan Zimmerman struggled to make the Chicago Cubs pay for walking Bryce Harper repeatedly during last weekend's series in Wrigley Field.

Dusty Baker talked when the Nationals returned to the nation's capital about trusting the veteran's track record and sticking with him in the cleanup spot behind Harper.

"A few days doesn't merit you switching it up," Baker said. "I mean, if he had gotten one hit in one of those times, you'd never even ask me this today. So, no not yet."

"I've been where Zim has been before and unless you've been in Zim's shoes, then you really don't know what it's like psychologically, to feel that somebody still has faith in you versus a fair-weather manager or fair-weather fan. I'm not a fair-weather-type guy. I'm not a 'forever' guy either, but a couple days is not near as long as forever."

Zimmerman went 0 for 4 in the series opener with Detroit, but last night he caught fire, launching two home runs to left field.

"Very encouraged," Baker said after the game.

"I mean those balls were loud and they were hit a ton and they were on a line which is what you want to see. I mean, that's the Zim that I know and we know. I'm very encouraged by how he swung the bat."

When it came time to write out his lineup for the series finale with the Tigers, however, Baker decided to make a change.

"Not anything unusual," he explained, "but it will probably be unusual to you guys, but not unusual to me, because I've been thinking about some things for quite some time.

"But I had to talk to Zim and [Daniel Murphy] first, because I thought about it today and switching them, not because of what -- I mean, why would switch today when Zim's getting hot and hits two home runs? But I switched today because Murphy is the only guy that's ever faced [Jordan] Zimmermann other than Jayson Werth and he's had quite a bit of success against Zimmermann, so today would have been a perfect day to bat him behind Bryce.

"Like I said it's nothing unusual. I had experimented with different lineups and stuff all Spring and how long I'm going to stick with this I don't know. It depends on how many lefties they have down in the bullpen down there.

"It's real important to me how you play the chess game in the lineup and how guys are swinging, but I had to talk to them, out of respect, talk to them first."

How did his players take the news of the swap?

"As expected," he said. "Zim said up to me, anything you tell me to do, you ask me to do and Murph said the same thing. That's the kind of guys they are.

"I didn't expect anything [different], but I just learned from being a player and having players on the team, how important it is to talk to them about it first.

"Even though, if they said they didn't like it I didn't know what I would have done then. You can probably guess what I would have done, so..."

Here's the lineup Baker is sending out for the series finale with Detroit:

#Nats vs #Tigers 3 of 3: Revere CF, Rendon 3B, Harper RF, Murphy 2B, Zimmerman 1B, Werth LF, Ramos C, Espinosa SS, Scherzer

— federalbaseball (@federalbaseball) May 11, 2016