Time to re-visit Bryce Harper and that pesky Hall of Fame question

The 1,500th hit of the impressive career of Bryce Harper came in an ultimately unsuccessful, furious Philadelphia Phillies attempt to catch the juggernaut Atlanta Braves, who had built up a five-run lead early in their game September 12. It was a home run that helped pull his team closer, his second late homer in three days.

Harper thus added the September 12 blow to his 300th homer two weeks ago as milestones passed in 2023.

A downside for Bryce Harper in passing these milestones — both in terms of the Phillies’ fate and Harper’s reputation — seems to be that his team sometimes wastes his clutch offensive contributions. The Phillies lost both of his most recent clutch-homer games, but this may be a story for another day, one dedicated to pitching failures.

Today is for re-visiting the chances for Bryce Harper to be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame one day

He is, after all, one of only two of MLB players with $300 million contracts to play in a World Series (with Mookie Betts). Nearly three years ago, however, Harper’s induction seemed in doubt. It was certainly within the realm of possibility. But at that time it was my view that he needed “to blow the doors off the rest of baseball offensively [for the next three years] to avoid being a member of only the Hall of the Very Good.”

Has he done that? Some likely will point to the fact that he’s missed some time for a Tommy John repair during those three years so he clearly wasn’t blowing doors off anything then. On the other hand, he returned to play (albeit as a designated hitter) only 160 days after that surgery, and then, learned to play first base. This allowed the Phillies by domino-effect to move weak-fielding Kyle Schwarber to the DH slot.

This all followed 2021, when Harper’s late-season efforts dragged the Phillies to their first winning season since Chase Utley led the team. Then came ’22, when he hit .349 in the Phillies playoff run to the sixth game of the World Series.

This included six homers, seven doubles, and 13 RBI.

In what will be, basically, a half a season of play this year, immediately after surgery, he is hitting .297 with 61 RBI thus far.

He has also largely been the Phillies Recruitment Officer for a very imposing Philadelphia line-up that includes J.T. Realmuto, Nick Castellanos, Kyle Schwarber, and Trea Turner.

Bryce Harper now has two MVP trophies, 302 home runs, 1501 hits, a career .911 OPS, and is in superb physical condition about a month before his 31st birthday. His induction at Cooperstown, barring catastrophic injury, is starting to look more and more likely.