Top of the Order: I Love Watching Bryce Harper Hit Dingers
Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
Fun with small samples: Bryce Harper entered Tuesday hitting .000/.154/.000 over his first 13 plate appearances of the season, with five strikeouts. After his second career three-homer game on Tuesday, he’s now at .200/.294/.800, good for a WRC+ increase of 198 points (from -34 to 164).
Harper put the Phillies on his back in a 9-4 win over the Reds, driving in six runs with the three homers — one a grand slam — that combined for 1,209 feet of distance and left the bat at 108, 103, and 108 mph. The grand slam, a left-on-left blast against Brent Suter, made the score at the time 8-1 and allowed the Phillies to cruise to a win using just two pitchers — an important reprieve for an overworked bullpen. Not a bad day on the job, and a much-needed good one for a Philadelphia team that entered the day 1-3 on the young season.
There’s just something so aesthetically appealing about watching Harper hit homers, especially into the raucous crowd at Citizens Bank Park. His long balls aren’t the hardest hit in baseball, nor do they travel the farthest. But seeing his ferocious swing unload and send a ball deep into the Philadelphia night is an unmatched view across the sport. It’s the antithesis of my favorite right-handed home runs to watch: the liners that Giancarlo Stanton smokes. Stanton suddenly turns his hips, flicks his wrists, and launches absolute rockets with what looks like no effort whatsoever. Harper puts his entire body into every swing, hurling his bat into the path of the incoming projectile, torquing what feels like the weight of multiple people to send a ball into flight.
Harper’s future Hall of Fame career has not been without its trials and tribulations. He’s always been a good or great hitter, but there have certainly been seasons where he was more the former than the latter. That’s an awfully high standard to hold him to, but when you’re a first-overall phenom, those are the breaks. Last year, two seasons removed from winning his second MVP award, it took him a few months to regain his power stroke after coming back from Tommy John surgery in record time, but once he did, we were privileged to watch him clobber 16 of his 21 dingers in August and September. And thankfully, this year we didn’t have to wait anywhere near as long for his thunderous bat to come alive.
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Seeing a team like the Pirates come out of the gates hot is always refreshing, though there’s obviously the context of playing the Marlins and Nationals, not exactly powerhouses. I’m not really convinced that they’re even a .500 team; most teams will have a five-game winning streak over the course of the season, and starting the season with one is no more indicative of a team’s talent level than ending the season with one to avoid 100 losses.
But while I’ll need a lot more time to gather thoughts for the team as a whole, I’ve really liked what I’ve seen so far from catcher Henry Davis. The former first overall pick struggled mightily in his debut last year, with a 76 wRC+ and -1.0 WAR in 62 games, almost exclusively playing right field instead of behind the dish. He was worth -9 defensive runs saved, and to my eye, the look matched the metrics: He has a very strong arm, but his reads were rough and he often had to be bailed out by the second baseman when a not-particularly-shallow fly ball was hit his way.
Back at his natural position, Davis looks more comfortable, grading out (in the very early going) as a scratch defender by DRS and very slightly above average as a framer. I also like how well he’s controlled the strike zone through his first 21 plate appearances, with as many strikeouts as walks; both rates are vastly improved from last season. Of course, all of that comes with a small-sample caveat, but you can’t fake exit velocity as a hitter, so it’s worth mentioning that he’s already hit a ball harder (111.5 mph) this year than he did all of last year (109.9 mph).
Tuesday night’s acquisition of Joey Bart should do nothing to unseat Davis’ position as the starting catcher, though perhaps it’s a little more pedigree breathing down his neck than Jason Delay and the currently injured Yasmani Grandal. It is an interesting “ships passing in the night” moment though for two catchers who were taken within the first two picks of their respective drafts.
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It’s too simple to say that Taylor Trammell is in for a breakout just because the Dodgers claimed him off waivers and should have playing time to offer him with Jason Heyward’s back troubles, but at the same time, there’s probably not a better fit for him. Hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc revitalized J.D. Martinez’s career a decade ago and also helped Chris Taylor break out, and it’s not implausible to think Trammell could be his next turnaround.
Trammell has a wRC+ of just 83 in his 351 career big league plate appearances, and at 26 years old and out of options, he’s at something of a crossroads. But he was our 61st-ranked prospect at the end of 2020, so it’s not as if the Dodgers have nothing to work with here. They’re hoping to do what the Reds, Padres, and Mariners all couldn’t: Turn Trammell into a quality major leaguer before moving on.
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How about a little love for Shane Bieber?
Only pitcher ever with 20+ K’s, 1 or fewer walks, and 0 runs allowed in his first two starts of the season. And he’s done it twice! First in 2020 and now in 2024.
Really impressed with Bieber’s mix and match this year. He knew the Mariners would be looking for fastballs to drive, so he mixed it up and threw almost as many out of the zone as in it. The result? Only three fastballs got hit hard in fair territory, and only one ended up as a hit, with a 38% CSW on the pitch. Just masterful.
Changeup usage wasn’t as good this time, but he still made good use of it to change speeds and get batters looking in the opposite direction of his breaking pitches. Mixed in his curve more effectively too. The Mariners had good swings, but they were playing his game the whole time.
Really impressed with how much quality contact the hitters are making, too. Nobody is giving up on at-bats, and they’re creating quality looks and swings even on deep counts. It’s what we need if we’re going to have a functional offense this year.
Can I just say how much fun it is to start the year hot? I’m so used to us being ice-cold under Tito.
In comments to the last Rundown, I said that I didn’t think the Pirates would be in on Bart because they had enough catchers for this and next year. I hereby eat my words!Apparently Delay is going on the IL, Grandal is not ready yet, and Ali Sanchez took minor league free agency after being outrighted, so the Pirates were out of backup catchers.
It’s so funny, they had like ten zillion catchers in their system for the longest time. But teenage catchers get ground down and spit out.
A league average defender / framer at catcher with a 125 wRC+ is something like a 4.5 win player in the range of 450-500 PAs, if my math is right. That would be very solid return for a 1-1 pick.
Okay, hear me out: I think the most likely scenario here is Bryce Harper has another couple of seasons where he hits around 165 wRC+ over a full year, plays until he’s 39 or something like that and accumulates a bunch of counting stats even if he’s more “good” than “great”, and cements his place in the Hall of Fame. This would put him clearly above guys like Dave Winfield but clearly below guys like Frank Robinson, and probably Clemente as well. An obvious Hall of Famer.
But I feel like we’ve gone to “Bryce Harper is a future Hall of Famer” a little prematurely. I definitely see this as as the likely outcome but he’s been injured so much lately I think we may be jumping the gun a little bit. Moving him to first base should help a little but I think the description here of Harper’s swing gives us the downside risk. There’s a (maybe 25%?) chance that his body is going to let him do that kind of swing long-term, and that if he does, he’s not going to play much at all.
I’m more worried that it took him all of one game at first base to go flying ass over teakettle into the dugout, his home-field dugout, on a ball he had no chance of catching anyway.
Not on board with you here. He is still signed for 8 more seasons and, short of a physical collapse which you seem to think is more likely to happen than I do, should reach 500 HR’s along with 2 MVP awards which are already in his trophy case. That is a guaranteed Hall of Fame resume.
The way I see it, Harper is a HoFer unless his 30’s resembles David Wright or Felix Hernandez. Even if he played like Angels Pujols or Reds Griffey, he would be a shoo-in. Good to remember that while Harper already has a great case with his stats, his case with fame is even greater, and that matters whether some people like it or not.
I agree. However, it’s pretty interesting to compare him to the worst player to win two MVPs and hit over 400 home runs: Juan Gonzalez. Bryce has generally been a better player, and Gonzalez’ quick decline after age 31 made it easier to disregard his HOF case, but he went into his age 32 season needing to average 26 home runs per season age 32-35 to get to 500 homers. He instead played fewer than 200 more games and ended with 434 homers, under 40 WAR and was bounced from the HOF ballot in his second year of eligibility.
I know he’s super famous, but I think a lot of people still view him as a disappointment. But maybe we run in different circles.
For the downside case, Andrew McCutchen through his age 30 season had 46 WAR in 5829 PA. David Wright had 48.7 WAR in 5945 PA. Harper had 47.5 WAR in 6454 PA.
McCutchen had also had a shocking collapse at age 29 which he bounced partway back from the next year. He sustained that level of offense for a season and a half and then got hurt and came back as a guy who signs one-year contracts. But even if he’d stayed a 2-win player, he’d have needed 7 or 8 years to reach HoFish levels.
Harper has always hit when he’s played, so the sudden-collapse case is more, he gets hurt again, and when he comes back his skill set has taken him down to 2 wins or so. But even several of these seasons seem like they should take him into HoF territory. So I guess I think in order for Harper to miss the hall he either has to have a serious collapse in performance like McCutchen, which had already started for him, or disappear due to injury like Wright. And some of these scenarios would lead to him getting in even without the stats, as a legendary talent felled in his prime.
I also thought of Cutch. Again, Harper probably plays several more good seasons. He’s probably going to end up in the Hall based on a very large number of good years. He’s awesome. But if the wheels fall off…
Almost nobody views Cutch as a future HoF. He put up five seasons of WAR over 5. Harper has two.
Harper raked in 2020, he was likely robbed of 2 to 3 additional WAR.
Maybe future HOFer is a stretch, but value wise, I have him on the edge/already crossed in to the hall with about 50 WAR (adjusting 2020) and some big peak/MVP years. He’s been mostly a monster in the playoffs too, at 996 OPS and 2.32 WPA in 215 PA.
If only the Nats had kept him long term somehow!