Phillies: Is Bryce Harper on a Hall of Fame track at this point?
Bryce Harper has been a lightning rod over his career, but there is no questioning his talent. However, is the Phillies outfielder on a Hall of Fame path?
Since so few of the MLB free agents this winter have been signed thus far, and even fewer of the highly ranked ones, it is time for all good baseball fans to distract themselves with one of their favorite pastimes – an entirely speculative argument about a current player’s chances of making the Hall of Fame. Today’s nominee is the Philadelphia Phillies outfielder, Bryce Harper.
Harper, of course, is one of the game’s highest profile players ever, a player one could find videos of when he was still an amateur teen. (The one I saw had him belting balls 500 feet in batting practice. I’d imagine it can still be found.)
And as all good fans know, Harper is currently holding the third most lucrative contract in baseball, one of six worth more than $300 million. Thus, it would seem he should be a lock for baseball’s Hall of Fame although some day, no doubt, a contract will be written for that sum or more for a player who doesn’t ultimately make it to Cooperstown.
How do we evaluate Harper’s chances? Why not compare him to two relatively recent HOF players who were, like him, Rookie of the Year awardees, power hitters, and opposed by modern pitchers.
Modern pitchers should be defined as starting pitchers who trained in arguably modern ways and who very often had to surrender the mound to multiple hard-throwing or tricky relievers in a given game.
Two players who fit our comparison needs are Eddie Murray and Mike Piazza.
But before we get to the matter of comparisons, we need to clear the deck about a still simmering debate regarding HOF-eligible players…
The Use of Performance-enhancing Drugs
Enormously talented ballplayers are not in the Hall because voters for that enshrinement (writers) won’t vote for them. You all know for these players’ names, and you all know those most shunned are reasonably thought to have really, really overdone PEDs.
However, the point is becoming moot because the writers most offended by such actions are dying off, and everybody knows that somebody who used PEDs has to be in the Hall already. It’s not just the guys who sneaked amphetamine use by the voters, but also those who used the more modern PEDs. This is not to say that Bryce Harper has been accused of PEDs use. He hasn’t been, by anybody credible.
It’s also true that one of the players under discussion here was credibly – um – observed to have admitted multiple times to taking a more than arguable PED – androstenedione: Mike Piazza. He just happened to do it before MLB banned it, and he’s now in the Hall of Fame. And once and for all, andro is what WebMD calls a “steroidhormone” (one word).
Bryce Harper is on the record as condemning PEDs use as “not good for baseball,” but again – this point is becoming moot.
Harper versus Murray
Eddie Murray hit 504 home runs in his 21-year career. Bryce Harper has hit 223 thus far in his 9-year career in an era of “enhanced home-run hitting” driven not by PEDs, but by computers. In other words, Murray averaged 24 home runs a year, while Harper is working to improve on his 25.7 a year, whether a full season or not.
Never mind that home runs are, while not exactly meaningless as a measure of greatness, far less important than they have been considered since Babe Ruth first belted far too many in one season oh-so-long-ago – that means 54, exactly 100 years ago. The ball was allegedly more tightly wound in 1920.
Home runs do sell tickets, and Bryce Harper’s aggressive swing on nearly every pitch he challenges recognizes that fact. However, Murray’s play exhibited a better contribution to the offensive game, arguably.
In his first nine years in MLB, Murray drove in 931 runs to Harper’s 668, a difference of 16 RBI per 162-game stretch. Five times in his first nine seasons Murray drove in 110 runs or more, including a massive 124 in 1985. Harper drove in 100 runs or more twice in his first nine seasons.
In terms of home runs, Harper has the top figure of the 18 for these two players’ first nine campaigns – 42 in 2015, when he won the MVP. He also had two other seasons of more than 30 HRs. Murray had more than 30 HRs in four of his first nine seasons.
Say what you will about home runs and RBI as imperfect measures of a player’s worth, but there is no denying they add runs to a team’s line score. They are the most tangible baseball statistics.
One of Murray’s career records points to his worth to his teams in scoring – sacrifice flies. In 21 years, he accumulated 128, the all-time record. Bryce Harper’s mid-career years will sit smack in the middle of the launch-angle era, and yet the best player ever at hitting the ball in the air when it counted, Eddie Murray, stopped playing in 1997.
Still, Harper has the more impressive OBP and OPS figures for his opening nine years.
As fielders, Harper and Murray are somewhat similar. Both have lifetime fielding averages near the league averages for their times – Harper’s is three points above the average, Murray’s finished his career one point below the average. However, Murray won three Gold Gloves. Harper has none thus far although as he hits his mid-career stride, the consensus is that he is an always-hustling outfielder with a very strong arm.
Moving into a largely intangible area, one might consider that against Harper’s singular MVP award and some votes in two other years, Murray can point to receiving MVP votes in every year of his first nine except his rookie campaign, and that, in a remarkable five of those years, he was in the top five.
Bryce Harper has a way to go to catch Eddie Murray – 12 years, perhaps – and even if he passes him in, say, home runs or RBI, he will not be able to erase Murray’s more impressive opening decade.
Harper versus Piazza
In the average baseball fan’s view, Mike Piazza was a great hitter, but lousy fielder, and this is not miles off the mark. On the other hand, Piazza played 16 years in MLB, and played the vast majority of his games at catcher.
The catcher is involved in literally every pitch of the game, unlike any other player on the field – every pitch at this position is an opportunity to do something wrong that can mushroom into something very wrong for the team. There’s no other player on the field in that position unless the starting pitcher involved throws a complete game.
Mike Piazza’s career fielding average at catcher was a mere point below the league’s average (.989 to .990). On the other hand, his career caught stealing figure was eight points below the league average (23 to 31 percent), and he never won a Gold Glove. Neither has Bryce Harper – so far.
What Piazza did win was Silver Slugger awards – ten in total, and eight in his first nine years – to Harper’s one so far. And in six of his first nine seasons, he drove in at least 105 runs. In two of those seasons, he drove in 124, and in 1998, he drove in 111 while relocating twice – from Los Angeles to Miami, and then to New York.
In his first nine years, Piazza slashed .328/.392/.580; Bryce Harper’s line at this point in his career is .276/.387/.513. Piazza’s career home run total was 427, and his highest total after age 30 was 36 at the age of 32. Harper has reached that total only three times under the age of 28.
The Bottom Line
Through their first nine seasons, Eddie Murray and Mike Piazza were both beaten by Bryce Harper in one significant, aggregate offensive category – OPS, with Harper’s 1.008 beating Piazza by 36 points, and Murray by 126 points.
Harper’s OPS figure very likely will fall back, though, as his career moves along, but his one real hope for enshrinement at Cooperstown is his age.
He is one of those very rare talents who began his MLB career under the age of 20.
Realmuto dance needs a new tune. dark. Next
However, Bryce Harper will need, if possible, for 2021 to be more like a real season than ’20, and in his next three years – at 28, 29, and 30 years of age – he needs to blow the doors off the rest of baseball offensively to avoid being a member of only the Hall of the Very Good.