Phillies: Is Bryce Harper on a Hall of Fame track at this point?

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.

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.