Harper #3 Overall Prospect

[Terpfan76]

Buh buh buh... but Jesus, the water you turned to wine isn't Domaine Romanée-Conti?

Yeah, that's what this sounds like. This kid is being called the next Mickey Mantle and were nagging about whether or not he's the best hitting prospect ever or best talent of a generation. Maybe I don't follow baseball as closely as some, I have a full time job, a home and a 2 year old that takes up a lot of my time, but aside from his majesty Stasburg, I've never heard of a prospect with as much can't miss hype as Harper. Looking at his talent level and his approach to the game, if he were 20-21 years old, he'd probably be in D.C. on the opening day line up. As it is, he's 18 and the idea of a kid that talented that actually could be ready to play in the Show at that age is almost unheard of. Maybe the Yanks will take him from us in a few years, but hopefully we'll be good enough by then that he'll be glad to stay in Washington.

[mimontero88]

Buh buh buh... but Jesus, the water you turned to wine isn't Domaine Romanée-Conti?

Win

[d_mc_nabb]

Okay, fine, write this down, book it, whatever. Harper is going to be a 20 time all star and save the worl. Lovely. That's what I believe will happen. I think he'll be very good, I do. But from what i read, somebody thinks that he's guaranteed to succeed and be excellent right off the bat. Whoever said that is wrong in principle- that is never the case. Any can't miss prospect can miss. I threw out one minor thing that's wrong with Harper- it's so minor, you can ignore it, but I threw it out there anyway.

[HalfSmokes]

Okay, fine, write this down, book it, whatever. Harper is going to be a 20 time all star and save the worl. Lovely. That's what I believe will happen. I think he'll be very good, I do. But from what i read, somebody thinks that he's guaranteed to succeed and be excellent right off the bat. Whoever said that is wrong in principle- that is never the case. Any can't miss prospect can miss. I threw out one minor thing that's wrong with Harper- it's so minor, you can ignore it, but I threw it out there anyway.

If he cut down the K rate he'd end up with a .500+ OBP and that's just silly

[PANatsFan]

If he cut down the K rate he'd end up with a .500+ OBP and that's just silly

Strikeouts are my favorite outs, except for maybe baserunning interference by the other team.

[JCA-CrystalCity]

It's funny.  When we had the yammering about prospects and "can't miss" types, the one consistent knock on Brandon Wood was his strikeout totals all the way up. That ended up killing him. 

I think Harper was just anxious in the AFL and the Ks will disappear when he starts playing regularly instead of twice a week.  He just was too competitive to take.

[houston-nat]

Yeah, I'd expect when Harper knows he's getting more than 8 at-bats per week he'll allow himself to swing a bit less. He knew that he wanted to make a big impression in a really small amount of time, so he knew that his goal was to rake.

And he DID rake.

[mimontero88]

Yeah, I'd expect when Harper knows he's getting more than 8 at-bats per week he'll allow himself to swing a bit less. He knew that he wanted to make a big impression in a really small amount of time, so he knew that his goal was to rake.

And he DID rake.

This.  Players just naturally press more when they know they won't get many ABs.  Thus the reason most players hit worse off the bench than as an everyday starter.

[Bryce Harper Facts]

That's an insult to the Harp.

[tomterp]

Monday Morning 10-Pack
Kevin Goldstein, BP  3/14/11

Bryce Harper, OF, Nationals
The inevitable finally happened over the weekend, as Harper was sent to minor-league camp with the expectation that he'll open the year at Low-A Hagerstown, where at 18 years of age he'll be among the youngest players at a full-season affiliate. He needs a starting player's at-bats to prepare for the season, but his time as a Nationals bench player was nothing short of magnificent, as he went 7-for-18 with three doubles. Maybe more impressively, he had just three strikeouts in some of his first exposure to big league-quality off-speed pitches. Harper said he wants to be in the big leagues by June, but even just a September call-up would be a remarkable achievement, and is not totally out of the realm of possibility considering his talent.

[GNatsNoMore]

 Maybe the Yanks will take him from us in a few years, but hopefully we'll be good enough by then that he'll be glad to stay in Washington.

I don't usually quote myself, but if you didn't get a chance to read "For the Love of Bryce Harper" in Washington Post Magazine last Sunday, I highly recommend it. Here's a relevant quote:

Great article!  Here's my favorite part (quoting his dad, Ron):

"Bryce has already been compared to LeBron. So [fans] probably figure as soon as he gets done [with his contractual commitment to Washington], he's going to bolt. That's not Bryce. That's not me. That's not us. I want him to be a National for the rest of his life. I would love that for my son."  

Knowing how close he is to his dad and the kind of family he comes from, it looks like there's an excellent chance he'll be a National until he retires.  (I just read it again: His dad doesn't just say "for the rest of his career", he says "for the rest of his life"!

[daggerrrrrr]

I don't usually quote myself, but if you didn't get a chance to read "For the Love of Bryce Harper" in Washington Post Magazine last Sunday, I highly recommend it. Here's a relevant quote:
Knowing how close he is to his dad and the kind of family he comes from, it looks like there's an excellent chance he'll be a National until he retires.  (I just read it again: His dad doesn't just say "for the rest of his career", he says "for the rest of his life"!

I just became a big fan of Bryce's dad.

[tomterp]

Premature Harpergasm
by Steven Goldman, Baseball Prospectus

As meaningless as 13 spring training at-bats are, Harper’s hitting (.308/.357/.462, two doubles) has fueled calls for him to break camp with the Nats. This speaks highly of Harper’s incredible physical tools and amateur record, because outside of a brief turn in the Arizona Fall League and 13 at-bats in exhibition games this spring, Harper’s professional track record is nonexistent.

Given that frustrated Washington fans are eager to see their club finally shake off its legacy as a ward of the game and the universal desire to get to see the next big thing, it’s easy to understand all of the panting after Harper, and the rationale used to justify the lust is deceptively simple: Hey, if he’s ready, he’s ready, so what harm can there be in advancing the timetable? The answer is equally basic: the major-league game has rarely been kind to teenaged hitters, whatever their talents or apparent state of readiness.

However good Harper looks now, if he plays in the majors this season there is every chance he will not do well. There is a great deal of precedent for pessimism in the brief history of teenaged prospects who seemed to be ready but, once confronted with big-league pitching, were unable to cope. Most of them got their chance long ago, when the reserve clause meant that bringing up a player far from the center of his career didn’t mean losing him at 24. Just 14 players have accumulated 100 or more plate appearances in the majors at age 18 or younger. There are three Hall of Famers in the mix, but none of them showed off their Cooperstown-level tricks during these early campaigns:
 

Table omitted due to formatting issues, may get back to it later.

During that 1905 trial, Cobb struggled both on and off the field, incapable of relating to the more experienced, hardened adults who populated the club. The temptation is to dismiss the Peach’s struggles; that was over 100 years ago, he was a unique psychological case, and there can be little doubt that Harper is a more refined physical specimen than Cobb was at the same age. Moving closer to the present day, we have Robin Yount, who was six months from his 19th birthday when he made his big-league debut with the Brewers in 1974 after just 64 minor-league games. Yount was terrible that year and would not have a season of any real quality with the bat until 1978, when he was 22. He didn’t have his first All-Star and/or MVP-quality season until he was 24 years old.

Alex Rodriguez provides a similar lesson. Drafted out of high school just shy of his 18th birthday in 1993, he hit well in the minors in the spring of 1994 and was called up in early July. Rodriguez struggled in the big leagues with the Mariners, hitting just .240/.241/.204 in 17 games and was sent back down. He again struggled in a longer audition in 1995, hitting .232/.264/.408 in 48 games. It was only at 20 that Rodriguez arrived as A-Rod, winning the batting title with a .358 average and smacking 36 home runs. The Mariners bought out his arbitration years that winter, so just 211games into his major-league career, Rodriguez had already broken through to a seven-figure salary.

This last is the key consequence to rushing Harper, never mind the most traditional concern, that if he is moved up prematurely, the player could struggle and lose his confidence, a consequence that has afflicted other promising prospects in the past. In truth, this does not seem a big issue; Harper is precocious, reportedly knows it, and his confidence may be impregnable to failure. The bigger risk, and it’s perhaps less a risk than a near-certainty, is that the Harper of 2011 will not be as good as, say, the Harper of 2015, and that the mature, 40-homer-a-year Harper will be a player the Nationals cannot afford. In their haste to see him sooner, Harper enthusiasts could lose out on seeing him later, at least in the nation’s capitol wearing the doubleknits of the hometown nine.

Harper is terrifically young. He will not turn 19 until October 16, an age at which many young ballplayers are still college freshmen. The reason he is already in the Nats organization is that he earned his GED so that he could skip his last two years of high school and start playing ball at a junior college. While that extra experience gives him a leg up on other high school-age players taken in the draft, it doesn’t mean that he’s a finished project in any sense, and remains years from his physical prime. There is no guarantee that he will adapt easily to the mental and physical rigors of the major-league game, not to mention the advanced pitching patterns of the Roy Halladays and Cliff Lees of the world, hurlers he would see all too often as a player in the NL East. His aggressive swing mechanics may make him particularly vulnerable to thinking pitchers who will entice him to lunge at offspeed pitches.

The economics of the game make letting Harper learn to adapt on the job a decision with huge ramifications as to how long he will stay with the club. When the Tigers gave a teenaged Ty Cobb a 41-game audition in 1905, it didn’t set in motion a process by which Cobb could sign a $30 million-per-year contract with the Yankees by 1911, three batting titles into his career. Similarly, had Yount come to the majors 20 years later, the Brewers would have been paying him millions after 1976, when he hit .252/.292/.301 or been forced to non-tender him, thereby likely forgoing the nearly 2,800 hits still to come.

Today, teams don’t have players under indefinite control, and they can’t pay them below-market salaries for more than two or three seasons. Most players are eligible for arbitration after three seasons, and a small additional group achieve “super two” status and get their big payday after two seasons and change. After their sixth season, a player can test the free-agent market. It is incumbent upon the Nationals to put the best Harper on the field that they can during the brief period they have him under their control.

Harper will no doubt be a gate attraction, something the drab Nats with their drab stadium that looks out over some drab parking decks could desperately use, particularly when drawing card Plan A, Stephen Strasburg, is on the shelf for the season. However, given Yount and Rodriguez, not to mention Cobb and Mel Ott, Brooks Robinson, and even Phil Cavarretta, the only 18-year-old to log a 500 at-bat season in the majors to date (despite beginning his major-league career at 17, he didn’t hit his stride until he was 23), the tyro slugger is more likely to be a curiosity this season than a legitimate star.

Even bringing Harper up at 19 will be a stretch, although the big leagues have been kinder to players a year closer to their 20s. At 19, fans got to see Mickey Mantle, Tony Conigliaro, and Junior Griffey, and although they too were far from their best, they were still very good. Again, though, it deserves noting that the Commerce Comet and Tony C were not going to inflate their salaries through arbitration. Should the Nats give in to premature Harper-gasm, they may sell a few extra seats now, but they will pay for the privilege, and pay, and pay some more, and the main thing they will be accomplishing is fattening up a potential franchise player for another team.

[epic_phalanx]

freak Steve Goldman. We're keeping Harper. Albert who?

[mimontero88]

I just became a big fan of Bryce's dad.

This.