It’s been some kind of year for young Bryce Harper. Remember that guy? The phenom outfielder, in the majors and tearing it up when he was still a teenager, pissing purists and old guard traditionalists off with his every move, pimping homers, shredding records and clown-question-bro’ing his way to what seemed to be a mercurial career just in its infancy?
Yeah, he’s still doing his thing. But if you live outside Washington, and only pay cursory amounts of attention to the daily minutiae of the professional baseball world, it’s can be easy to overlook the trials and tribulations of the now 21-year-old. And if you hadn’t yet noticed, while his first two seasons were two of the best by a player his age in a long, long time, his third has been marked by controversy, offensive ineffectiveness and tumult. Let’s check in on the year he’s had.
There were early season struggles at the plate that led Harper to tell reporters, “I’m pretty lost right now.” There was a mid-game benching on April 19, when Harper made little effort to run out a ground ball fielded by the pitcher, earning himself a seat for the rest of the game and a public scolding from his manager, Matt Williams.
There was the slide into third base just six days later that tore a ligament in his left thumb and forced him to miss two months while it healed. There was the day he returned from the DL in late June, when he publicly disagreed with Williams over the Nationals batting order and even which players were in the lineup.
And then there was an epic July slump, which has featured everything from spiked helmets and shattered bats to an endless array of swing adjustments to Williams appearing on an early morning radio show the day after a particularly disastrous night at the plate for his young star, ruminating about whether it would be a good idea or not to send him to the minor leagues.
That may sound like a bit much — and shortly after he made those comments Williams lashed out at the media for blowing the story out of proportion, pouring cold water all over a fire he’d started himself — but when you look at Harper’s production it’s clear that the young phenom hasn’t exactly earned his playing time.
In his first 25 games after returning from the DL, Harper hit .232/.337/.341, with just five extra base hits. He struck out 27 times, and had a batting average on balls in play of .321, which suggested he was actually getting lucky during that period and that his production was above what it should have been.
Many noted that his timing appeared to be off and that he was visibly having trouble pulling balls to right field, possibly because his thumb was still bothering him and robbing him of his power. He also appeared to be trying a new batting stance, one that was much more upright with a lower hand position than his previous one which featured significant bend at the knees, with his hands up beside his head.
Harper’s discipline numbers don’t shed much light on the issue, as he’s swinging at about the same amount of pitches as he did the last two seasons, and chasing pitches outside the zone at a rate consistent with his career performance. He’s showing the same advanced patience he always has and getting the same amount of pitches to hit as he has in the past.
The issue is he’s doing much less with them. His contact rate is down from 77.4 percent in 2013 to 71.9 percent in 2014; and his swinging strike percentage has risen from 10.9 percent last year to 13.6 percent this season, which is well above the league average of 9.3 percent.
Pitchers also appear to be less afraid of Harper this season, throwing him hard pitches like fastballs and cutters 60 percent of the time in 2014, after giving him just 57.5 percent in 2013 and 54.5 percent in 2012. Meanwhile, pitchers are feeling the need to go to their breaking pitches less against Harper, feeding him 24 percent breaking pitches in 2014, vs. 28 percent in 2013 and 31 percent in 2012.
Part of the reason for this is because Harper has been swinging and missing at hard pitches 11.4 percent of the time this season, after whiffing against them just 6.8 percent of the time last year. With such a high whiff rate, pitchers can lean on their hard stuff early in counts to get ahead, then turn to breaking pitches, against which Harper is hitting just .170 this season. Pitchers were wary to do that last year when Harper slugged .405 against breaking pitches, which included seven of his 20 home runs. But in 2014 Harper has just one extra-base hit off a breaking ball — a double.
So it seems that Harper’s troubles are coming from within, whether he’s still dealing with his thumb injury, unable to find a comfortable approach at the plate, or struggling to re-discover the swing mechanics that made him so successful throughout his entire life. We may be seeing some of the growing pains that all young ballplayers experience, the only difference being that Harper’s are playing themselves out on the major league stage because he was advanced through the minors so quickly.
If anything, Harper’s down year could ironically be a plus for the Nationals (assuming it’s a mere slump and not indicative of one of the most talented players on the planet suddenly forgetting how to hit), because it will drive down the premium he can obtain through arbitration when he becomes eligible (the specific timeline for Harper’s eligibility is another issue in itself). The fact he’s making just $2.15 million this season, and only $2.25 million next year as part of the creative contract he signed with the Nationals in 2010 that also included eight fully paid semesters of college, already makes him a tremendous bargain. And without big home run and RBI numbers this season, he may have to wait later into arbitration or even until he’s a free agent for the first time in 2019 before his agent, the always-avaricious Scott Boras, can earn him his first massive payday.
It’s been some kind of year. And it seems to be taking yet another turn. Harper had three hits Wednesday night, giving him 15 in his last 13 games, including three homers which doubled the amount he’d hit in 2014 up until that point. He appears to be heating up. He may be turning things around. And as they sit seven games up on the NL East, winners of nine in a row and cruising towards a playoff spot despite receiving hardly any contribution from their most innately talented player, the Nationals can only hope that’s the case.