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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