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After week off, slugging Harper looks like his old self again
- Updated: August 22, 2016
It’s probably too simplistic to merely say “Bryce Harper struggled for months, sat for a week, and has been fantastic since.” It’s probably a bit of cherry-picking to also note that a struggling Justin Upton sat for three days and has been crushing since, or that a struggling Andrew McCutchen sat for three days and has been outstanding since, or that the Cubs have currently given a struggling Jason Heyward a long weekend off and are hoping for similar returns. We don’t know what we don’t know.
Here’s what we do know: In eight games since returning from what the Nationals termed a “stiff neck,” Harper has looked a whole lot more like the hitter who terrorized pitchers in 2015 and early on in 2016, and a whole lot less like the player who’d mysteriously lost nearly all of his power in May, June, and July.
Consider the three parts of Harper’s season, shall we?
April 1 – April 30: .286/.406/.714 96 PA .442 wOBAMay 1 – Aug. 6: .219/.365/.362 353 PA .315 wOBAAug. 14 – Aug. 21: .400/.526/.700 38 PA .518 wOBA
(What’s wOBA? It’s Weighted On Base Average, a stat that is roughly similar to batting average except that walks exist and extra base hits are weighted to be more valuable than singles. The Major League average wOBA this year is .319; Harper’s mark last season was .461, meaning his April this year was nearly as good as his Most Valuable Player 2015 season.)
Or, take a look in a much more visual way that shows Harper’s monthly exit velocity, with August split between “pre-break” and “post-break.” It’s easy to see how great April was, and how quickly that changed before recently.
Now, the obvious question is “what happened,” and it’s more than fair to point out that a mere 38 plate appearances aren’t really enough to say with certainty that “he’s back,” because anything can happen in 38 plate appearances — especially when three of those games came at Coors Field, and the remaining five have come against the rebuilding Braves, who have one of baseball’s least effective pitching staffs. It’s completely fair to point that out, because that’s definitely part of the story.
Still, this isn’t Sandy Leon or Ryan Schimpf coming out of …
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