Fantasy Baseball: Is Bryce Harper still a first-rounder?

Just hours before the crazy, wonderful finale to the 2016 World Series, a dozen fantasy analysts and aficionados gathered online to take part in a 2017 fantasy baseball mock draft. I took part in the event, which was hosted by the fantasy editorial team at CBSSports.com, and had the 11th pick in this fictitious 12-team Head-to-Head points league. After the first 10 picks elapsed, I realized I already had an unexpected dilemma.

Bryce Harper, one of 2016’s consensus top three picks, was still available. And I was prepared to let him slip at least one more pick.

It was clear that Harper was not going to be a top-three pick. His 2015 MVP season was now sandwiched by campaigns in which he at least a cut below the elite. Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw further strengthened their cases to be the top pick overall, and Mookie Betts, Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Arenado, Josh Donaldson, Kris Bryant and Jose Altuve solidified their status as potential early first-rounders. And Harper never even came through with that postseason “walk-off bomb” he kept hinting at with the guy at the laundromat.

Still, I didn’t expect he would fall to me at No. 11. Yet, instead of pouncing on him, I passed him up for Anthony Rizzo. Paul Goldschmidt was just taken with the 10th pick, and I didn’t want to miss out on Rizzo’s consistent power, on-base and run production. Then, as I expected, Harper was taken with the final pick in the first round.

I was surprised to have this dilemma and impressed by how difficult of a choice it was. I wondered if there was a consensus around this choice that I wasn’t privy to, so I went to Twitter to find out. It turned out that the majority of respondents in my poll agreed with my choice, but by no means was the result a runaway.

If Harper is a borderline option to take with the second-to-last pick in the first round, then we may be living in a world where he isn’t a bona fide first-rounder anymore. Superficially, that seems like a harsh correction for a player who rolled into this year’s All-Star break with 19 home runs, 52 RBI, 50 runs, 13 stolen bases and a .399 on-base percentage.

Harper wasn’t far off his 2015 home run and RBI pace, and if he hadn’t been typically hitting one or two spots ahead of Ryan Zimmerman (.169 batting average with runners in scoring position in the first half), he might have been on a more robust run-scoring pace. If Harper’s .252 BABIP was weighed down by bad luck, he might have deserved better than his .256 batting average and 11 doubles.

Even with the declines in his run-scoring and doubles pace and in his batting average, in this points format, Harper finished the first half as sixth-ranked outfielder. That still means he had underperformed, but he was in position to finish as one of the very top outfielders in fantasy.

As we now know, that didn’t happen. Instead, Harper increased his strikeout rate by nearly half and batted .226 with five home runs the rest of the way. If we take a closer look, it’s apparent that Harper’s struggles were not just limited to the second half. His first half numbers were strongly boosted by his work in April, when he was launching flyballs at a 52.3 percent rate and sending those flies 286 feet on average (per FanGraphs). By hitting nine home runs and six doubles in that month alone, Harper hit more than one-third of his homers and one-fourth of his doubles during that stretch. Over the rest of the season, Harper’s flyball rate was just 40.5 percent, and his average flyball distance was a modest 267 feet.

As to why Harper hit for so little power for so much of the season and why he struck out 22.8 percent of the time in the second half, we can’t be sure. He did deal with some neck issues at least briefly, and then there was the Sports Illustrated report of a persistent shoulder injury. It’s extremely plausible that Harper was hampered by injuries, but there is no definitive proof of it. Whether his struggles can be tied to a health concern or to just plain inconsistency, they are going to be a drag on his perceived value for 2017.

Yet we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the factors that put Harper in the conversation for first overall pick this past spring. He displayed a slightly better skill set than Trout in 2015 and had a much better supporting cast to help with run production. After a season in which he played 153 games, I didn’t discount Harper’s injury risk enough, but no one, myself included, is likely to make that mistake in next spring’s drafts. Upside alone shouldn’t elevate Harper into the top three picks overall, but how far should his inconsistency and questionable health drop him?

One thing that Harper has working in his favor is the weakness of the outfield pool, even in the upper stratum. Even though Betts outproduced Trout in this particular format this year, the Angels’ center fielder is far and away in a class all his own. He has been producing at this level for five years running, is the superior power hitter to Betts and walks far more often. Once Trout is off the board, Harper is as viable as any remaining outfielder, including Betts.

When comparing Harper and Trout, consistency and health are tie-breakers between two outfielders with unparalleled skill sets. When comparing Harper with Betts or any other outfielder, there is no tie to break when it comes to upside. At his best, Harper is at least equal to Betts in batting average, not far behind in steals, and blows him away in regard to power and on-base percentage. One can make an argument for drafting Betts over Harper, but it’s argument based on privileging safety over potential. With a first-round pick, that’s a reasonable thing to do.

Harper is preferable to the rest of the outfield pool, and it’s a no-brainer. (I’m excluding Bryant here, as he is also eligible at third base. However, there is a case to be made to draft him over Harper, even if you plan to use him in an outfield slot.) Everyone else, from Giancarlo Stanton to George Springer to Charlie Blackmon to A.J. Pollock, has consistency and/or health concerns of their own and nowhere near the same upside.

But does being one of the three best outfielders make Harper a player who needs to be taken in the first round? I would not only argue that he should be, but that I actually made the wrong call in this mock draft. In this particular situation, I should have taken Harper with the 11th pick and risked losing Rizzo to the owner at the turn.

It’s practically a lock that he would not have taken two first basemen with his picks, but even if he did, one of Joey Votto or Miguel Cabrera would have been available for my next pick. I would have preferred, for example, the combination of Harper and Votto to the combination of Rizzo and Stanton that I actually drafted.

If I had been drafting a few spots earlier, I still would have taken Harper over someone like Max Scherzer or Manny Machado, as I would have had better fallback options at starting pitcher or shortstop than I would have had at outfield. In short, I don’t see a potential scenario where Harper should go undrafted within the first 12 picks, and he could reasonably go as early as eighth overall.

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Bryce Harper led the Nationals to victory with a dinger and a truly righteous bat flip

Bryce Harper is less a baseball player than a destroyer of worlds. He hits dingers seemingly on command, he treats fans when they least expect it and he's coming off of one of the greatest hitting seasons of all time -- a season for which he took home NL MVP. Oh, and he turns 24 in October.

So when Harper goes yard, like he did in Washington's 3-0 win over the Phillies on Saturday, he flips his bat. But it's not just any bat flip -- it's a bat flip of calm disdain, as if he's offended that this piece of lumber is still in his presence after having done its duty:

Wait, hold on, we need several more looks at that to give it proper tribute. The flip:

The swagger:

It's this bat flip's world, and we're all just living in it. 

This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Bryce Harper’s 451-foot home run could bring another red seat to Nats Park

Bryce Harper’s first-inning home run off of Dodgers starter Bud Norris on Wednesday traveled 451 feet and landed in the rarefied air of the third deck at Nationals Park. It was Harper’s longest home run of the season and the third-longest home run of his career, trailing only the 453- and 452-foot home runs he hit last season.

“All of us in the dugout were pretty in awe,” second baseman Trea Turner said. “I’ve never seen a ball land up there.”

According to CSN’s Daniel Shiferaw, Harper’s home run landed in the lap of Rev. Dr. Susan Moore of D.C.’s All Souls Church. The spot — Seat No. 13 in Row J of Section 236 — could one day be marked by a red seat.

The Nationals began marking historic and long (i.e., landing in the third deck or Red Porch) home runs before last season, similar to how the Senators commemorated Frank Howard’s 500-level home runs with white seats at RFK Stadium.

The following six home runs, including two third-deck shots by Harper, were marked before the 2015 season:

No home runs have been marked since, but a Nationals spokesperson said that Harper’s latest home run meets the criteria. No timetable has been set for adding another red seat to Section 236.

Nationals' Bryce Harper: Two hits in Friday's win

Harper went 2-for-4 with a run scored and an RBI in Friday's win over the Padres.

It's his second straight two-hit game, and after slumping through the latter part of May, Harper's now hitting .308/.393/.404 through 52 June at-bats. It's only a matter of time before his power re-emerges as well, so the Nats' slugger could be poised for a productive few weeks heading into the All-Star break.

Can 'baseball unicorn' Bryce Harper bring magic back to the game?

q's sports culture panel thinks beyond the play-by-play to weigh in on the societal impact of sports stories. Not a fan? Not a problem. Our panel watches much more than the scoreboard. 

Today the Toronto Star's Morgan Campbell, CBC host and reporter Sonali Karnick and Globe and Mail baseball columnist Stacey May Fowles join Shad to discuss the biggest and strangest stories in sports. Today: 
 

• Baseball's bad boy Bryce Harper was suspended for confronting an umpire. Is he baseball's fun saviour? Or kind of a jerk? Fowles certainly seems pro-Harper: "He's a fabulous baseball unicorn ... he's performing for himself." But Campbell is a bit more skeptical, noting that players of colour get a lot more flak for similarly colourful behaviour. 
   
• It's the 20th anniversary of the WNBA so why does women's basketball seem to be leaving America en masse? Can superstar player Skylar Diggins stem the tide? Campbell argues that every few years, the WNBA presents celebrates its own unicorn, presenting her as someone who will elevate the entire league. "It's a bit too much of a burden to put on one person," says Campbell. 
   
• And forget the hammer and sickle, the steroid seems to be this generation of Russian athletes symbol of choice, the country is once again under fire for doping. Campbell calls it "state sponsored doping". "Something has to be done but we should be very cautious about saying that a boycott is a good idea," adds Fowles.

The story behind Bryce Harper’s ‘Make Baseball Fun Again’ hat

Tom Rauen was positive Bryce Harper’s new hat would cause a stir. He just didn’t know when the reigning MVP would show it to the world.

About two weeks ago — after Harper’s comments to ESPN the Magazine about infusing his sport with joy sparked national headlines — Harper reached out to Rauen with a request: he wanted a “Make Baseball Fun Again” hat.

“Sure thing,” the owner of Envision Tees replied.

The next day, Rauen ordered the hats. Two days later, he sent a pair of models — one red, and one white — to Harper at spring training in Viera, Fla. Then he waited.

“I thought he was going to wear it right away,” Rauen said. “But he knows that if he would have wore it last week after a spring training game, it might have been picked up by a couple people. The fact that he timed it on Opening Day, after he hit a home run and he was already going to make some media headlines, it kind of just put together the perfect media storm.”

That’s why Harper, and his hat, were on every sports website Monday night. It’s why tweets about the hat were shared thousands and thousands of times. It’s why ESPN did a segment on the hat Tuesday morning. It’s why Rauen started receiving a flood of emails, asking why the hats were not for sale.

“I wasn’t planning on selling it,” he said. “I was lying in bed [Monday night], and I was like ‘All right, I’ve got to get this thing up.’ People were bombarding me with emails.”

So now you can buy the original model, from its maker. Envision sold dozens Monday night; during our 11-minute chat Tuesday morning, the company sold two more. But while the demand might have surprised Rauen, the interest didn’t.

“I knew for sure [it would cause a splash], just because of the timing, with the elections coming up and everything that’s going on,” Rauen said. “I knew as soon as he wore it that it would be a hit.”

Rauen’s Iowa apparel company — Envision Tees — has been making shirts for Nats giveaways for a decade, after submitting a bid from afar. He started traveling to Washington and forging relationships with players and agents, so that “if there was anything they wanted on a personal level, we could be their go-to guy.” The company made those wristbands Harper wore last season, featuring a caricature of his face. Envision once made Teenage Mutant Ninja Hurlers T-shirts for the Nats pitchers. Toward the end of the 2013 season, at Harper’s request, Envision made red-and-black camo T-shirts reading “To the last minute. To the last second. To the last man: We FIGHT!”

Of course, there’s a separate history to these Harper hats. Because after the ESPN the Magazine attention in early March, Brady Phelps was touched by inspiration:

Then it hit me. Trump’s stupid MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN hats were everywhere. What if I made a hat for Bryce Harper that said MAKE BASEBALL FUN AGAIN? It was perfect. I’m not so hot at photoshop (super-hot at MS Paint though), so I hit up my buddy @nick_pants with the idea. Within hours, Nick came through like a champ with this.

I fired out the tweet, tagged Bryce, and said to myself, “This hat is awesome. I should actually make these. They’d sell like hotcakes. You could even change the colors around for your team. I should even send one to Bryce! How funny would that be?” Did I do any of that? No, of course not. I did nothing.

Phelps saw history pass him by. Others, though, spotted an opportunity more quickly. Barstool Sports, for example, is also selling the “Make Baseball Fun Again” hats.

So I like to think of this as a giant baseball collaboration: of an idea from Brady Phelps, and a Photoshop from @nick_pants that the outfielder might or might not have seen, and marketing savvy from Bryce Harper, and an apparel company from Dubuque, and a dramatic win from the Nats (thanks to several bungled plays by the Braves), and then all of us social-media-obsessed hat-and-slogan-loving weirdos agreeing that this was something the world needed to see.

“I was kind of sitting back and waiting, waiting, waiting. And I think he timed it perfectly,” Rauen said. “It was pretty cool to see the media just go crazy on it.”

Washington Nationals Editorial: Revisiting the Bryce Harper vs. Mike Trout Debate

After Bryce Harper’s historic 2015 season, let’s revisit the Bryce Harper vs. Mike Trout debate

In the 2012 season, Major League Baseball began its transformation from a veteran-dominated sport to a league headlined by young talent. The National League stepped back in awe as Washington Nationals 2010 No. 1 overall draft pick broke on to the MLB scene, leading his team to their first playoff series in team history while taking home Rookie of the Year honors.

Meanwhile, over in the American League the Los Angeles Angels were busy watching a young stud of their own take his first full season in the majors by storm, finishing second in MVP voting while receiving the AL Rookie of the Year Award.Bryce Harper and Mike Trout, both selected in the first round of their respective drafts, may just be the best two players in all of baseball, but who will be better in 2016?

Combined, the two phenoms have hit 236 homers, drove in 645 runs, and accumulated two MVP awards. In 2016, Trout will be entering his age-24 season while Harper, a year younger, will be looking defend his MVP title after his historic age-22 year. While the Angels’ center fielder has accumulated more accolades and accomplishments over the past four years, Harper has put together the more dominant single season.

In their careers, Trout leads the way in nearly every offensive statistic, from games played to home runs. No one in their reasonable minds will doubt that Trout has been the better player. In the field, Harper has more outfield assists (in less opportunities), but Trout avoids errors much more often.

Looking at single season totals, however, changes the game completely. In their best single-season efforts of their careers, Harper beats Trout in home runs, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, walks, and OPS, while Trout has the edge in hits, doubles, runs scored, RBIs, and stolen bases.

Heading into 2016, which player will have the better offensive season? Trout figures to be hitting third in the lineup, placed between Kole Calhoun (.308 OBP in 2015) and Albert Pujols(.480 SLG). Harper will most likely slot in at the number three spot as well, sandwiched between Anthony Rendon (.344 OBP) and Ryan Zimmerman(.465 SLG). Both players have teammates in front of them that can get on base and power hitters behind them that are capable of driving them in. So the question boils down to, who will be a better hitter?

If both players remain healthy, one could easily see either of them taking home their respective MVP honors in 2016. They have the chance to become the first duo to ever win Rookie of the Year and MVP Awards together. Harper is the flashier player, always playing with a high level of intensity unparalleled by the rest of the league. Trout, on the other hand, has been the most consistent player in all of baseball. The scary part? They’re both only getting better.

All right, all right, who do I think will be better in 2016? Call me biased, but here’s the case for Bryce Harper. The 23-year old is coming off one of the greatest single-season efforts in the history of the game, regardless of age. Staying healthy has been a problem for Harper in the past, but I expect that getting a full season under his belt will do wonders for the rest of his career.

Since August 1st of 2014, Harper has posted a 1.082 OPS, far and away the highest mark in all of baseball. That is eight months of regular season baseball in which he averaged a higher OPS than Hall of Famer Tris Speaker ever achieved in a single season. Trout has a pretty high ceiling, but it remains to be seen if he ever achieves numbers that historic.

With both players seemingly having their paths to Cooperstown cut out for them, all that’s left to do is sit back and watch the two studs compete at the highest level. They aren’t even 25 yet folks, so let’s sit back and enjoy the ride.