Bryce Harper returns, but the Phillies’ bats go quiet in a 13-1 drubbing by the Dodgers

LOS ANGELES — Bryce Harper sat at the end of the Phillies’ bench, two hands on the bat, as Tuesday night’s game began. And when the time came to take his place on deck, he bypassed the dugout steps at Dodger Stadium and climbed over the padded railing instead.

“He’s itching to play,” manager Rob Thomson said.

Well, that’s obvious. Harper completed the fastest return on record from Tommy John elbow surgery — 160 days from the operating table to DHing in a major-league game — when he stepped in against Dodgers ace lefty Julio Urías.

It was 10:14 p.m. in Philadelphia. The Phillies could get on with their season.

» READ MORE: Bryce Harper is back with the Phillies. How long will it take for him to hit like Bryce Harper?

But if anyone thought the hard part was over for Harper, let what happened in a 13-1 stomping by the Dodgers — a second consecutive blowout in which the Phillies resorted to putting infielder Kody Clemens on the mound in the eighth inning — be a reminder that the degree of difficulty remains higher than even the hills that frame this picturesque ballpark.

Because if hitting the best pitching on the planet wasn’t tough enough, Harper is trying to do it without spring training or a minor league assignment. His first attempt ended in an 0-for-4, three-strikeout disappointment.

It wasn’t surprising, even for a two-time National League MVP.

“Not the game we wanted to have, right?” Harper said after Dodgers star Mookie Betts upstaged his grand return with three hits and three RBIs. “Granted, I’m excited to be back. Going through six months of grinding and hard work, to be able to get back today, I was extremely excited. I want the results to be better.”

When the Phillies plotted when Harper would return this week, Thomson noted that Urías, as tough a lefty as there is in the league, was set to start Tuesday night. Harper didn’t care.

Urías said he knew that Harper would be aggressive — “He was hungry,” he told reporters in Spanish — and not just because Harper ambushed him for a first-pitch homer in the same ballpark nearly a year ago. Sure enough, before an announced crowd of 42,780 — including Harper’s agent, Scott Boras, on the edge of his front-row seat behind home plate — Harper swung at the first pitch in every at-bat.

Batting in his familiar No. 3 spot in the lineup, No. 3 took his first ferocious hack and fouled off a slurve, Urías signature pitch. Harper swung and missed at four of them in three at-bats.

No offense to the minor leaguers that Harper has been facing in the ramp-up to this moment. They don’t throw anything that resembles that pitch.

“He usually attacks me that way anyway,” Harper said. “He threw the ball pretty dang well tonight. It’s the big leagues, right?”

Indeed. Even Boras, who calls his famous client “a centurion, because he’s one of the top 100 players ever,” acknowledged the challenge that Harper is attempting to meet, not only in his first game back but over the next few days and weeks.

“You’re facing Urías, [Boston’s Chris] Sale [on Friday night], you’re facing a rookie you’ve never seen,” Boras said, referring to Dodgers prospect Gavin Stone, who will make his major league debut Wednesday. “Yeah, that’s all.”

Actually, it isn’t. Harper also is adjusting on the fly to the pitch clock. According to the new rules, hitters must be in the box and ready to hit with eight seconds left on the clock. Harper was notorious for taking his time at the plate.

“I took a long time from the on-deck circle to the batter’s box, and in between pitches, I take a while,” Harper said. “Definitely an adjustment period. Got to figure out what I want to do, how I want to do it.”

Harper will adapt. He defied all timetables in coming back from a reconstructed elbow ligament. When he told Boras after his Nov. 23 surgery that he was circling a May 1-3 series in Los Angeles as a target for his return, the agent was incredulous.

“I said, ‘Do not say that to anybody,’” Boras recalled before the game. “I go, ‘You have super healing qualities, I agree. You’re elite, you’re exceptional, you’re a centurion. I get all that. The fact is, this is an eight-month thing.’”

» READ MORE: Bryce Harper will return to the Phillies’ lineup on Tuesday. Is it too soon?

It won’t take nearly that long for Harper to regain his swing. But it’s going to take time.

“I thought the bat speed was there. I thought he was on a lot of pitches,” Thomson said. “There’s going to be some timing stuff, recognizing breaking balls, things like that. This is big league pitching.”

Said Harper: “I had some pretty good pitches to hit in that second at-bat, and then that last at-bat as well, that I should’ve had better swings on. The swing feels good. I don’t want to change that.

“I feel like my timing is pretty good. It’s pitch selection for me right now. It’ll get better.”

With the clock ticking on his time in the rotation, lefty Matt Strahm gave up four runs on six hits and got only 10 outs before yielding to a bullpen he will rejoin in roughly two weeks.

Thomson noted that Strahm’s velocity was down slightly. Strahm said his problems stemmed from not having a feel for his cutter. It marked the first time in six starts that he allowed more than three runs. Thomson said the Phillies will take advantage of three days off within the next week to give Strahm a breather.

And once Ranger Suárez returns from a spring-training elbow strain, Strahm will shift to the bullpen role for which he was signed.

“Strahmy hasn’t really started in the last couple years,” Thomson said. “I think we’re putting him at risk physically to keep running him out there and running up his pitch count.”

» READ MORE: Matt Strahm has been the Phillies’ best starter, but he could help the bullpen once Ranger Suárez returns

In what the Phillies hope will be the start of something, Trea Turner crushed a 420-foot solo homer on to the netting in straightaway center field in the fourth inning.

It snapped Turner’s drought of 31 consecutive plate appearances without an extra-base hit, dating to his first-inning homer on April 23 at home against the Rockies.