Bryce Harper, Four Years In

We are living in a golden age of youthful, historic talent, especially among position players. From the Cubs’ deep group led by Kris Bryant to Manny Machado in Baltimore, a critical mass of impact talent has entered the majors in recent seasons. Last week, we put the career of this group’s standard-bearer, Mike Trout, into some sort of historical perspective. This time around, let’s do the same with the guy who had an even better 2015, National League MVP Bryce Harper.

Mike Trout snuck up on a lot of people in the 2009 draft. His athleticism was unquestioned, but believe it or not, Trout’s bat was the one tool that wasn’t a slam dunk during his amateur career. He swung and missed an awful lot against relatively ordinary high school talent in New Jersey, and hadn’t built up the requisite high-end wooden bat tournament dominance that one might expect out of a very-top-of-the-draft guy. Therefore, he didn’t go at the very top of the draft; he went 25th overall to the Angels.

No such doubts existed regarding Harper. He was barely a teenager when he was bombing 500 foot drives, albeit with an aluminum bat, in a home run hitting contest at Tropicana Field. He was locked in as a Scott Boras client at a very early age, and his precocious nature can perhaps be best summed up thusly: he was the first overall pick in the 2010 draft out of the two-year College of Southern Nevada, a full year before his high school class graduated. That’s a man-child for you.

This obviously set the bar at a very, very high level with regard to his eventual major league performance. So high, in fact, that his perfectly acceptable though not overwhelming 2012-14 performance was seen by some as a disappointment. Then 2015 happened. Any number of superlatives can be applied to his MVP campaign, but perhaps the greatest tribute that could be paid is that he was pretty clearly better than Mike Trout last season, by any measure.

How do Harper’s three good though not great seasons, plus his 2015 for the ages compare to other players at the same age and/or experience level? Let’s look at Harper in the same way we recently examined Trout.

As I have occasionally done in the past on these pages, I’m going to tick off some statistical purists. I am fully aware that when you are working with standard deviations, or z-scores, you technically shouldn’t be adding them together. However, summing the number of standard deviations above league average is a pretty informative way of evaluating the elite tier of performers in a given population.

I have gone back to 1901 and measured the number of standard deviations above/below league average in on-base and slugging percentage (OBP and SLG, respective) for each MLB regular. Then, I summed those relative OBP and SLG scores over each player’s career, obtaining an ordered list of the players who have accumulated the most offensive value in the game’s modern era. This is not a good way of measuring the talent of players in the league average range; an average performer, after all, would come up with a score of zero.

There are, however, 359 players who have accumulated 10 or more standard deviations (OBP and SLG) above league average over their careers, from #1 Barry Bonds (54.26 standard deviations above league average OBP plus 48.93 standard deviations above league average SLG = 103.19 total standard deviations above MLB average production) to #359 Don Mincher (5.22 + 4.81 = 10.03). There are no park or positional adjustments; this is just a pure measure of relative offensive production that has the side benefit of splitting a player’s value into its separate OBP and SLG components.

Of those 359 players with a career value above 10, 38 are currently active. Of those 38, 17 have been qualifying MLB regulars for 10 seasons or more. Another 12 have been qualifying regulars for eight or nine seasons. Three of them, Trout, Harper and Paul Goldschmidt, have been regulars for all of four seasons. Trout is ranked #161 and Harper #341 all-time, at the tender ages of 23 and 22, respectively. (Goldschmidt is ranked #241 as a 27-year-old four-year regular.)

Let’s quickly take a step back and focus on Harper’s age. Simply being a major league regular at age 19 is a really big deal. First of all, even Trout didn’t arrive for good that quickly. Only three 18-year-olds (Johnny Lush, Phil Cavarretta, Robin Yount) qualified as MLB regulars since 1901. Only 23 19-year-olds since 1901 fit that criterion, including Harper, who was the fifth most productive offensive player among that group, behind Mel Ott, Tony Conigliaro, Ty Cobb and Sherry Magee, and just ahead of some guy named Mickey Mantle. Pretty good company.

Fast forward to the present… let’s see where Harper’s career through age 22 ranks in MLB history, using the methodology explained above:

Career Leaders – OBP And SLG Production Through Age 22

	AGE	YRS	CAR OBP	CAR SLG	CAR PRD	CAR OPS+
Ty Cobb	22	4	7.51	10.36	17.87	168
Ted Williams	22	3	8.05	7.65	15.70	182
Mike Trout	22	3	6.97	6.86	13.73	172
Mel Ott	22	4	5.63	5.90	11.53	152
Bryce Harper	22	4	5.23	5.46	10.69	143

Harper is clearly running with the big boys here. Ted Williams went on to finish #2 in career value using this method, with Ty Cobb (#4) and Mel Ott (#10) also finishing in the top 10. Trout, along with Williams, ranks ahead of Harper on this list despite playing only three seasons as regulars through age 22.

In my analysis of Trout last week, we next looked at his four-year performance compared to other four-year regulars, of all ages. Amazingly, Trout finished eighth on that list, one inhabited by much older players in their mid-to-late twenties. Harper, thanks to his relatively tame (at least in this company) first three seasons, ranks nowhere near as high on a list of most productive four-year regulars. In fact, he finishes 63rd. What we can do here is identify the players ahead and just behind him on this list who experienced similar sharp upward spikes in production in their fourth seasons as regulars:

Year Four Breakthrough Performers

	AGE	YR 4 OBP	YR 4 SLG	YR 4 PRD	CTD OBP	CTD SLG	CTD PRD	YR 4 %	CAR PRD
Arky Vaughan	23	3.85	2.85	6.70	8.56	5.33	13.89	48.2%	29.25
Jeff Bagwell	26	2.75	3.65	6.40	6.53	6.19	12.72	50.3%	41.55
Al Rosen	29	2.00	3.16	5.16	4.25	7.24	11.49	44.9%	14.54
Joe DiMaggio	24	1.99	2.78	4.77	2.73	8.37	11.10	43.0%	33.78
Bryce Harper	22	3.61	3.61	7.22	5.23	5.46	10.69	67.5%	10.69
Albert Belle	27	2.03	3.30	5.33	2.07	8.32	10.39	51.3%	24.92
John Olerud	24	3.18	2.40	5.58	5.80	4.22	10.02	55.7%	25.39
Dolph Camilli	30	2.39	2.27	4.66	4.28	5.14	9.41	49.5%	25.95
Sherry Magee	22	1.87	2.29	4.16	2.48	5.86	8.34	49.9%	33.42
George Foster	28	1.11	2.93	4.04	1.23	6.83	8.06	50.1%	17.79
Kevin Mitchell	27	1.60	3.60	5.20	1.74	5.90	7.64	68.1%	21.66

In the “YR 4” columns, the number of standard deviations above league average OBP, SLG and PRD (OBP + SLG) are listed. In next three columns, each player’s career-to-date (through Year Four) totals are listed. In the next to last column, the percentage of their career-to-date production attributable to their Year Four performance is listed. The last column lists each player’s final career PRD (OBP + SLG) total.

Time for another quick step backward, this time to appreciate the sheer enormity of Harper’s 2015 season. His OBP and SLG were both exactly 3.61 standard deviations better than league average. That’s off of the edge of the bell curve, folks. Going back to 1901, that 7.22 combined standard deviation total ranks as the 17th best individual season of all time.

The most recent non-Barry Bonds campaign among the 16 “better” seasons occurred 53 years ago, Mickey Mantle’s age 30 season, in 1962. These 16 seasons were accounted for by only five players: there are five seasons each by Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, four Bonds seasons, and single campaigns by Mantle and Rogers Hornsby. Again, that’s the crowd we’re dealing with here. Among those 16 seasons, only Williams’ age 22-23 and Ruth’s age 25-26 seasons were recorded by players under the age of 28. These mega-years, by and large, were posted by fully grown men, at the peak stage of their careers, when their raw physical tools and their accumulated knowledge of hitting intersected at the highest point.

You’ll notice that in the table above, only Kevin Mitchell recorded a higher percentage (68.1%) of his career-to-date value in his Year Four season alone than Harper (67.5%). Most of the others on this list aren’t even close to that level, and remember, this is the subset of the high-performing four-year regular group with the highest percentage of their career-to-date value recorded in Year Four.

Of his other three seasons, Harper’s best campaign was his second season, 2013, when he posted a combined 2.05 standard deviations above league average OBP and SLG. All but three players on the above list — John Olerud, Magee and Mitchell — had at least one season better than that prior to their fourth seasons as regulars. Performance-wise, the 2015 season really came out of nowhere, though our eyes have always told us that Harper had it in him.

Through four seasons, this group of players recorded 38.42% of their eventual career value using this method. If Harper were to exactly meet that average, he would end his career 27.82 combined STD above league average OBP and SLG, ranking him 75th of all time, right between Keith Hernandez and Mike Piazza. Of all the players listed above, Magee had recorded the lowest percentage of his eventual career value through four seasons as a regular, at 24.96%. If Harper were to meet that mark, he’d rank 33rd, between Johnny Mize and the truncated post-1901 career of Nap Lajoie.

I’d lean more toward the latter rank, as Magee is the only other 22-year-old included among the players listed above. And to be honest, I look at that #33 ranking as Harper’s floor, more or less. Remember, among 22-year-olds, he’s in the Cobb-Williams-Ott-Trout class. We only introduced this second group because of Harper’s sudden, violent 2015 ascent.

What granular building blocks drove that upward spike? Believe it or not, there wasn’t a dramatic improvement in batted ball authority. Harper ranked in the average range authority-wise in 2014, and moved up to over one-half (but less than one) standard deviation above league average in 2015. Harper’s BIP authority, scarily enough, might have room to grow. His largest 2015 changes were in two areas that can spell trouble in the long haul: sharp increases in his fly ball and pull percentages.

The most extreme fly ball hitters in the game, as a whole, tend to see their performance decline the following season. One reason is that such hitters are relatively easy to pitch to: keep the ball in areas that make it harder to elevate. Another is that it simply isn’t natural for hitters to record extreme fly ball rates on an ongoing basis, and fewer fly balls mean fewer home runs. Chris Davis, for example had an extreme fly ball rate in 2013, portending a 2014 decline. His fly ball rate declined in 2014, and he struggled. It spiked back up in 2015, and he surged. Next comes his 2016 decline.

Harper’s fly ball rate was in the average range in 2014, and over a full standard deviation above average in 2015. Not quite what I would call extreme, but there isn’t much upside for his fly ball rate to climb before it becomes a concern.

Harper’s pull percentage also spiked significantly last season, up from 38.9% (average range) in 2014 to 45.4% (over a full standard deviation above average). Only Curtis Granderson, Jung-ho Kang, Nolan Arenado, Todd Frazier, Yangervis Solarte, Troy Tulowitzki, Jay Bruce, Ryan Howard, Cody Asche, Jimmy Rollins and Michael Taylor pulled more among NL regulars last season. There’s an awful lot of risk on that list. It is a very good, borderline great thing to be able to recognize the pitches one can selectively pull for power and then execute that act. The problem is when it moves beyond that point, and pulling becomes the overriding norm, the infield overshifts, and you bat .150 or so on grounders. It’s a very fine line, and age 22 is a bit early to begin toeing it.

That said, let’s not overly fixate on the few areas of concern here. A key but relatively understated aspect of Harper’s 2015 season was the surge in his BB rate which was accompanied by a sharp decline in his K rate. His BB rate was over one-half STD higher than league average in 2014, but over 2 STD higher in 2015. His K rate plunged from over one full STD higher than league average in 2014 to the average range in 2015. None of the players listed on the above tables experienced such a dramatic K/BB shift in Year Four; it’s historically significant in both its magnitude and suddenness.

This clearly tells us that Harper is much more than just a bomber; he’s a got some pure hitter in him as well. His line drive rate was in the 62nd percentile in 2015; though liner rates fluctuate quite a bit from year to year, this marks the third time in four seasons that Harper recorded an above average liner rate. His pop-up rate was also below league average (43 percentile rank), unusual for such an extreme power hitter.

What does all of this mean moving forward? I’m not ready to anoint Harper as a future top-10 all-time offensive player, as I did with Trout. That possibility exists, for sure, but that would require seasons like 2015 becoming the norm. The enhanced K and BB rates substantially raise Harper’s floor, but I would venture to guess we witnessed his ceiling this past season. There just isn’t a lot more room to move in terms of fly ball and pull percentage before the risks start to elbow out some of the rewards.

If there is one takeaway from this article, as well as the accompanying piece on Trout, it is this: these kids are barely old enough to drink, and they are accomplishing almost unprecedented things in front of our eyes. Bask in it; it might be another half-century before we see anything like Bryce Harper’s 2015 season from a 22-year-old again.