Use without license or authorization is expressly prohibited. The SPORTS REFERENCE and STATHEAD trademarks are owned exclusively by Sports Reference LLC. Logos were compiled by the amazing .Ĭopyright © 2000-2023 Sports Reference LLC. Our reasoning for presenting offensive logos. We present them here for purely educational purposes. All rights reserved.All logos are the trademark & property of their owners and not Sports Reference LLC. Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and Safety Information / Your California Privacy Rights are applicable to you. ^ Back to Top ^ © 2023 ESPN Internet Ventures. He might now be the best player in the game. But moving forward? Bryce Harper is not just the straw that stirs the drink, the brash character not afraid to challenge the status quo, the most interesting, must-watch player in the game. Certainly, in career value right now, it's not close. Trout still has the advantage of playing a premium defensive position, and Harper still has to prove he can be durable season after season. Now, some of that is mitigated by ballpark effects - Trout plays in a good pitchers' park - and perhaps quality of opposition, but if Harper ends up putting more balls in play, that's going to lead to more hits and a few more home runs. Last year, Trout had 66 more strikeouts than walks, whereas Harper had just seven more strikeouts than walks. While he did fan twice against Adam Conley on Tuesday, Harper still has nine walks against six strikeouts this season. One reason to like Harper's bat a little more than Trout's moving forward is his control of the strike zone. Through 2014, Trout crushed:īut then Harper became the National League's unanimous MVP in 2015: When both were rookies in 2012, when Harper became a 19-year-old All-Star and Trout a 20-year-old phenom, there was a fun debate: Who would you rather have? That debate ceased to exist the next two seasons, when Trout morphed into this generation's Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle and Harper performed well but missed some time with injuries. That's why it's good pitching!Īnyway, that's worthy of further investigation. Of course, I suspect almost all hitters don't hit good pitching as well as they hit bad pitching. in Virginia, who likes to point out that Harper has performed less heroically against the Mets: I get that there are readers out there like my chat regular A.J. I get that Harper has feasted so far on the Marlins, Braves and Phillies, thanks to the Nationals' early cakewalk schedule. 220/.333/.340 line, which includes just one home run. I know we're only two weeks into the season, and Trout's obviously going to improve his. Good luck.Īs Harper terrorizes opposing pitchers while Mike Trout gets off to a slow start, I wonder: Is Harper surpassing Trout as the unquestioned best player in the game? Now, all you Harper haters out there, relax. He has pulled six of his seven home runs, with one going to center field last year, he pulled 20 of his 42 home runs. This year, those numbers have continued to climb, with his fly ball rate increasing from 34 percent to 49 percent. Harper broke out at the plate last season in part because he started hitting more fly balls and pulling the ball more. OK, but you need a pitcher who has the command to locate the ball there and preferably with plus velocity. Maybe he has a little weakness down and in or up and in. I wasn't sure Harper could get better after his monster 2015, but he has improved his contact rate when swinging, from 73.1 percent in 2015 to 81.1 percent, and has cut down on his chase rate on pitches outside the strike zone. Like Bonds, the trouble with getting Harper out is that he's so good at covering the entire plate. He's so locked in at the plate, you wonder if he's going to start receiving the Bondsian treatment: a lot of unintentional intentional walks, and maybe even an intentional free pass with the bases loaded at some point. 333/.429/.867 and has more walks than strikeouts. It was his fifth home run in six games, his seventh overall. It was Harper's second grand slam of the season in his second bases-loaded opportunity. The next pitch was a slider, and Harper didn't miss, depositing a fly ball in the stands in right-center field, 413 feet from home plate. Realmuto: "Do you want to give it up on a fastball or a breaking ball?" Realmuto, and I imagine the discussion might have gone something like this: Marlins reliever Chris Narveson had a quick meeting with catcher J.T. The Washington Nationals had the bases loaded with two outs in the seventh inning, leading the Marlins 2-0 and with Bryce Harper up. You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browserīryce Harper's explosion: Has he surpassed Mike Trout as game's best?
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