PHILADELPHIA — Maybe the Phillies need to see how a souped-up Bryce Harper drives.
“You put gas in the tank and the Harperi – meaning the Ferrari – works,” Harper’s agent Scott Boras said. “Bryce shares in the frustration of the Phillies not being a world champion. Dave has to do the catharsis every year when they don’t win it, and I’m sure it’s difficult to do.
“However, give Bryce Harper more pitches to hit and the metrics speak that all that they want will be delivered. Because the metrics are clearly there that he’s among the top in the game. He continues to be. All that data says that.”
Harper, who turned 33 last week, batted .261 with 27 homers, 75 RBIs and an .844 OPS this season. It was his lowest OPS since 2016 (.814) and his lowest OPS+ (129) since 2019 (126). But Harper’s .844 OPS still ranked 22nd out of 145 qualified players in baseball, and his expected metrics were mostly better than 2024, when he batted .285 with 30 homers, 87 RBIs and an .898 OPS:
But Harper saw pitches in the zone only 43 percent of time, the fewest out of 532 players (minimum 200 pitches).
“That’s the stat,” Boras said.
Harper saw only 39.1 percent of pitches in the zone in the postseason, 83rd out of 84 players (minimum 50 pitches). Boston’s Ceddanne Rafaela saw the fewest (36.5 percent).
Harper spent most of the season hitting third in the lineup. Phillies cleanup hitters posted a combined .720 OPS, which ranked 20th in baseball.
It was their lowest ranking out of any spot in the lineup.
“A glaring element of this is that of anybody in baseball, he gets the least amount of pitches to hit,” Boras said.
The Phillies would benefit from having a true slugger hit fourth, even if it doesn’t mean a substantial increase in pitches in the zone for Harper. His chase rate (35.6 percent) was just a tick below his career-worst rate in 2022 (35.7 percent). It was 33.4 percent in each of the previous two seasons.
Perhaps he makes an improvement there with a big bat hitting him.
Perhaps the Phillies re-sign Kyle Schwarber in the offseason and hit him behind Harper, like he did earlier in the season. If Schwarber signs elsewhere, the Phillies could turn to a free-agent slugger like Pete Alonso, who is a Boras client.
It’s highly unlikely, however, the Phillies sign both, based on their payroll situation.
“I don’t think we’re going to have a $400 million payroll,” Dombrowski said.
It wouldn’t happen anyway, unless Harper returns to the outfield. Harper said in Spring Training and again before the July 31 Trade Deadline that he would return to the outfield, if the Phillies found the right bat.
But it doesn’t sound like a position change is something the Phillies are seriously considering.
“I think Bryce is a first baseman at this time,” Dombrowski said. “I mean, that’s what we look at him as. He has asked to go out into the outfield. He would be willing to do so. But I think it would be more for the short term, if we’d have done something at the trading deadline.”
Regardless of where he plays or what the Phillies do this winter, it sounds like Harper will come to camp ready to post MVP-like numbers again.
“I think he’s highly motivated to have the best season of his career next year,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said last week. “That’s what the plan is going to be for him.”
Harper missed nearly a month this season because of inflammation in his right wrist. The Phillies said he finished the season healthy, but when they clinched the NL East at Dodger Stadium last month, Phillies owner John Middleton said, “Bryce has been nursing a bad wrist all season.”
“The only issue that I was surprised by is that Dave did not say that Bryce Harper missed a month of the season and therefore his numbers volume-wise weren’t there,” Boras said. “But Bryce Harper being Bryce Harper is a talent, and how they can improve is that he’s got to get more pitches to hit.”
