Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper drove a Jon Lester
fastball over the left-field fence at Wrigley Field on Wednesday for his 18th
home run of the season and his 13th in his last 19 games.
Harper, now 22, played very well for most of his first three
seasons in the Majors and frequently flashed the type of potential that made
him a Sports Illustrated cover boy at only 16 years old. But the
young star has never before enjoyed a stretch this long of production this
great.
With the Nats now 47 games deep into their 2015 campaign,
Harper already has more homers and more extra-base hits than he tallied across
100 games in an injury-riddled 2014 season. He is on pace for 63 homers this
season, and if he could somehow maintain his 13-homers-in-19-games clip the
rest of the way — and he almost certainly won’t, naturally — he would finish
with 78.
It’s nuts. Harper has started the season so well that only
an injury or an unprecedented slump will keep it from being by far the best of
his young career. And a look at some of Harper’s numbers suggests the
difference has come from improved plate discipline.
Check this out: In the early part of 2015, Harper saw
significantly more pitches per plate appearances (P/PA) than he ever did in the
past — jumping from a slightly above average 3.89 figure to a 4.36 mark that
ranks second in the Majors. Harper has swung less frequently and walked far
more often.
And though it could be in part a function of the pitchers he
has faced to date, Harper has seen a higher percentage of fastballs — the pitch
on which he does the most damage — than he ever did earlier in his career. His
percentage of hard-hit balls, as tracked by Baseball Info Solutions, has spiked
in turn. From the looks of the numbers, Harper is doing a much better job
choosing when to swing than he did in the past — “hunting his pitches,” to echo
a phrase frequently used by veteran MLB hitting coach Dave Hudgens.
Of course, there’s some chicken-and-eggery at play here.
Harper, for his part, told the Washington Post earlier this month that
the only difference has been his health:
“This is what I was like in high school and
college,” said Harper, who twice had four-homer games at the College of
Southern Nevada, where he hit 31 homers in 66 games in 2010. “That’s what
people don’t understand. I was healthy. Staying healthy is what I need to do.
This is the type of player I need to be and the type of player I want to be.
Everybody talks about how I’m doing this different or I’m doing that different.
There’s nothing different. It’s staying healthy and staying in the lineup.
Truly….
“I feel like the approach, the plan, it’s always been there,”
Harper said. “But I’m finally sticking to it because I’m not getting hurt and
staying healthy. It’s allowing me to stay in the games every single day and
staying with my routine every single day and not getting sidetracked because
I’m hurt and out a game and play two and then out for a month and a half and
come back and play.”
Could it be that good health and more regular reps alone
have contributed to Harper’s apparently improved batting eye? Certainly. He
obviously looks more comfortable at the plate than ever before, and it could
easily be that the various ailments he sustained the last few years sapped some
of his power or impacted his mechanics in a way that forced him to start
swinging sooner.
On MLB Network, analyst Darryl Hamilton cued up video
of Harper’s swing to show the slugger keeping his weight back longer this
season to generate more power. But again, since Harper typically doesn’t say much about the particulars of his
mechanics at the plate, it’s hard to know which of the adjustments he
made were made possible by the better health he credits for the difference.
In any case, whatever has happened to Bryce Harper this
season has now been happening long enough that it can no longer be dismissed as
just a fluky early-season hot stretch. By whatever means or combination of
them, Harper has become a more selective hitter in 2015, swinging less
frequently and hitting the ball harder when he does.
And though this is not to slight Harper — who seems to know
as much about baseball as anyone playing it — but it could be that the change
plays out so subtly on the day-to-day that he himself is not even conscious of
it. The difference between 3.9 and 4.4 pitches per plate appearance, after all,
is less than one extra pitch across every two at-bats. Maybe Harper is just
maturing as a hitter, seeing pitches better and hitting them harder as he grows
bigger, faster, stronger and more experienced.
What we are watching, most likely, is a great young hitter
blossoming into a great hitter. Harper may not maintain his Ruthian home-run
rate and on-base percentage all year, but if he can stay healthy and maintain
his apparently improved process, the Nationals should benefit from
significantly improved results all season long.
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Sorry for the Capatcha... Blame the Russians :)