No, you canât go to Nationals Park this week to boo Bryce Harper. That might be for the best, given Harperâs start to this season, his sense for certain moments and his inherent ability to become absolutely torrid, which once endeared him to folks around here.
The fans who would normally pile into the ballpark this week long ago declared their view of the Philadelphia Phillies right fielder: villain. What they should see, if they stepped back a bit and cherished the World Series title their team now holds and Harper still seeks, is a talent that â whatever his flaws â remains mesmerizing. The Bryce Harper who arrives with the Phillies for three games this week isnât the Bryce Harper who finished his seven-year run with the Nats nearly two years ago. At 27, heâs still evolving.
Harper faces his old team without the ring the Nats now own but with so much of his story still to write. As the Nationals turned into a wrecking ball last October, they flipped their reputation as a postseason pushover â without Harper. Be careful connecting those dots, because if you do, youâre saying a team won a World Series because it lost a player who hit 35 homers and drove in 114 runs â Harperâs first-year production with the Phillies. Are the 2020 Nats better without Anthony Rendon? Of course not.
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When Harper agreed to become a Phillie for life â by signing a 13-year, $330 million deal â there were reasons to be skeptical that he could consistently match the hype that began when he graced the cover of Sports Illustrated as a 16-year-old. My belief then: At 26, his best years were still ahead of him. His start to this odd season could be an indication of just that.
Harperâs on-base-plus-slugging percentage upon arrival at his old yard: 1.119, best in the National League and higher than any he has posted in any of his first eight full seasons. Now, Philadelphia is only 24 games in, and this pandemic-shortened season is only 60 games long. But the stats count. More important, there may be indicators that he could, finally, replicate his MVP season, an MVP season that came five years ago. (So, too, could Nats left fielder Juan Soto, whose OPS entering the series was 1.302 â better than Harperâs, but without enough plate appearances to qualify for the leader board. That comes soon.)
Back in 2015, when Harper reached base at an insane .460 clip â tied for the highest mark in the past decade with Mike Trout of 2018 â scored 118 runs and launched 42 homers at age 22, it seemed many more MVP awards would be in his future. No player, including Trout, has produced a season that matched Harperâs 2015 OPS of 1.109 in the past dozen years.
What followed, though, made that year look not like a predictor but like an outlier. The four subsequent seasons â three with the Nats, last year with the Phillies â produced an .893 OPS. Thatâs very good. Itâs just not elite. Over that span, 22 players exceeded it.
Thereâs a saying in baseball: You are what the numbers on the back of your baseball card say you are. But thereâs no saying that a 27-year-old canât improve the numbers on the back of his card going forward.
âIâm never satisfied with what I do,â Harper told Philadelphia reporters over the weekend. â⦠When Iâm not swinging at bad pitches, when Iâm not swinging at pitches out of the zone, thatâs when Iâm at my best.â
Viscerally, thatâs true. We can all remember times when Harper expanded the strike zone and was more responsible than the pitcher for getting himself out. When he takes his walks, he is a machine. His walk rate to start this season is 17.7 percent â not the 19 percent rate of his MVP year but higher than in six of his eight full major league seasons.
Data provided by the website FanGraphs doesnât necessarily indicate Harper is laying off those tempting pitches just out of the zone; heâs still swinging at more than 31 percent of them, higher than at any point in the past six seasons. But he is making marginally more contact than he did a year ago (70.9 percent to start this season, 68.3 percent in 2019) â and when he does swing, he is more effective than normal. According to Statcast data, he is âbarreling upâ â read: hitting the ball off the barrel of the bat â 18.3 percent of the balls with which he makes contact. Sustained over an entire season, that would by far be the highest percentage of his career.
Given the point in this strange season, place a flashing âsmall sample size alertâ on all of the above. But also acknowledge that Harper may still be transforming into what he ultimately becomes.
One of many useful tools employed by the essential baseball-reference.com is the âsimilarity score,â which compares players over eras by age. Itâs a bit like real estate comps. At 22, Harper was most similar to Frank Robinson, the former Nats manager who was a no-doubt Hall of Famer. In each of the four seasons since, he has compared most closely to Andruw Jones, the former Atlanta center fielder who was a five-time all-star but hasnât landed in Cooperstown.
Delve into those comps a bit, though, and thereâs an indication of the possibilities still ahead. Through age 26, the third-most similar player to Harper is Ken Griffey Jr. â a generational talent who is now in the Hall of Fame. Eddie Mathews, Trout, Miguel Cabrera and Robinson all rank in the top 10. Mathews and Robinson are enshrined. Trout and Cabrera will be.
Five springs ago, after he was asked about his reaction to the Nats signing free agent Max Scherzer, Harper famously said, âWhereâs my ring?â Heâs still looking, and maybe that would add further fuel to taunts at Nats Park once fans return.
But as it becomes far more normal to see Harper as a Phillie, remember, too, that such teasing comes at your own peril. Bryce Harperâs start to this season could be a preview of whatâs ahead, and that could bring years of torment to whichever pitchers he faces.
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SOURCE: https://www.w24news.com
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