Washington Nationals: Bryce Harper's Slump Illustrates His Greatness

Bryce Harper is off to a slower start this year for the Washington Nationals, and needs to make some adjustments, and yet he is still one of the best players in baseball.

Maybe it’s just because I am young and have thus only watched baseball seriously for 10 or so years, but it feels to me like the game right now is rife with amazing young talent, guys who, if not for there being so many of them at once, would be referred to as “generational” talents. Mike Trout. Manny Machado. Bryce Harper. Clayton Kershaw on the pitching side.

These are all guys who, despite likely being less than half way through their careers (significantly so for the first three) feel destined for the Hall of Fame. Kershaw is being talked about as a potential Greatest of All-Time on MLB Network by both traditional and sabermetric-minded writers/hosts.

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Today, though, I want to talk about Washington Nationals outfielder, 2015 NL MVP and leader of the Make Baseball Fun Again movement Bryce Harper, who many are saying is slumping so far this year. And, you know what, that’s probably true. After all, Harper is only hitting .252 on the season, right? We know batting average is pretty limited in what it can tell you, but even looking at Wins Above Replacement, his 2.6 win total is 28th in baseball, after holding the top spot (at 9.5 WAR) last year.

Google defines a slump as “undergoing a sudden severe or prolonged fall in price, value, or amount.” So, yes, in the context of his potential, Bryce Harper is in a slump. His value has fallen. But think about how absolutely insane it is that his current production is well below his potential.

Harper has a .397 on-base percentage. He has 15 home runs through 300 plate appearances, meaning he is on pace for over 30 home runs over a full season. That 28th place WAR still extrapolates to about 5.6 wins over the same full season (650 PAs), a far cry from the 9.5 he posted last year, but still well above average and bordering on elite — Chris Davis‘ 5.6 WAR last year placed him 14th best in baseball. Bryce Harper could continue his current “down year” and still be a top 15 player in the game. Woah.

The thing is, though, he probably won’t continue this same tepid (by his standards) pace. As mentioned earlier, he is hitting just .252, but that’s about the only thing that isn’t elite right now. And the reason for that is largely some bad luck on balls in play. His BABIP is a very likely unsustainable .254. For those unfamiliar, BABIP can help measure “luck,” in that if a player’s BABIP is far off of what it normally is, or far off from the league average range of .290-.310, regression to the mean is likely due.

However, there is a tendency to oversimplify BABIP, and assume that any BABIP not near .300 is unsustainable. That isn’t true. If you hit the ball hard, it is possible to sustain a higher BABIP — usually not much more than .350-.360 or so (the highest BABIP among qualified players since 2012 is Christian Yelich at .366, followed by Miguel Cabrera at .361), but still well above .300. Similarly, if you do not hit the ball hard consistently, or hit a lot of fly balls, especially if you are also not a good runner, you can run a low BABIP (the lowest among qualifiers since 2012 is Brian McCann at .239).

We know that Bryce Harper can hit the ball ball hard — his Hard Hit rate of 40.9% in 2015 was 6th best. It is, however, down so far this year to 33%, while his soft contact rate is up to 23.4%. So, maybe some of the BABIP issues are deserved. But his Hard Hit rate is still in the top 100 in the league, right in line with the likes of Jose Abreu, Mookie Betts and Ian Desmond. All three of those players have BABIPs over .290. Desmond’s Hard Hit rate is 0.1% lower than Harper’s, but he has a .386 BABIP, over 130 points higher than Harper’s.

Now, there are other differences in their batted ball profiles, as Harper has a lower line drive rate than those three (and line drives turn into hits more often than grounders or fly balls). That absolutely has to change if we are to expect a significant uptick in his BABIP. I do not want to make excuses, and attribute everything to luck right after talking about how it isn’t that simple.

The main point here is more to appreciate just how special Bryce Harper is. His line drive rate is in the bottom 10 of qualified hitters. His batting average is in the .250s. And he is still 29% better than the league average hitter by wRC+ (Harper is at 129, league average is 100), because he does so many other things well.

He is walking as much as he did last year, at an astounding 19.3% clip. His strikeout rate is actually down this year to 17.3%. The power isn’t quite what it was in 2015, as he owns a .235 isolated power (ISO) this year compared to .319 last year, but that is still borderline elite as well.

Next: Leonys Martin Reinvents Himself

I fully expect Bryce Harper to figure out how to start hitting more line drives again, which will help out his BABIP and in turn his batting average, bringing him more in line with what we expect from the young phenom. But let’s appreciate that, even if he doesn’t make that adjustment for some reason, he can still be an elite player. And that’s pretty amazing.

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