I heard Tim Kurkjian talking about this today on one of the local sportstalk shows. He was saying that Harper has always had a tendency to be too intense and take failure too hard -- to the point where Davey Johnson once famously told him something about easing up on himself.
I noticed a while back that he just looked grim whenever the cameras were on him -- and this was maybe even before he really started slumping. He just may not have the kind of personality that's suited to carrying all that comes with being perceived as a superstar.
He does look too wound up and not at ease when at the plate. His personality is probably not helping him. What I saw from the beginning of the year was this. First he was very relaxed, and didn't swing at anything outside the strike zone. He walked a lot and hit more than he does now. "He is taking what the game gives him" the pundits said. Soon, he became impatient, and started swinging at sliders low and away -- they are like catnip to him. Once pitchers noticed this, he got sliders, low and outside, whenever they wanted to put him away. Then pitchers began playing with him, testing the umpire's outside limit. Since Harper was getting more close pitches now, he naturally struck out whenever he misjudged the umpire's strike zone. Striking out a few times on close pitches that way made him even more impatient and less inclined to lay off a ball low and away. Now, he has the worst of all worlds, he's all twisted up not knowing when to swing and when to take a pitch, while at the same time he is even more desperate to get a hit; meanwhile, the pitches are throwing him junk more than ever, and he is hitting les and less.
