Bryce Harper, #2 Overall Fantasy Player
Bryce Harper finally did it. It was over five years ago when he was drafted #1 overall by the Nationals. This past season, the 22-year-old became the top fantasy player with one of the best seasons ever. He will not even be 25 next season, so the only direction he can is up, right? Actually, it’s better to tap the brakes on the Harper love, especially when it comes to his power.
Let’s start with a few facts on Harper everyone should know:
1. He is young.
2. He was probably the most hyped hitting prospect ever.
3. He had a great 2015 season.
In an early industry draft, Harper was taken #1 overall. Even with the above facts, I just can’t take him #1 for two reasons.
Reason #1: Mike Trout
I just can’t see myself putting him over Trout. We can’t just expect Harper to be the league’s best player next season. He has performed like this once, not four years in a row like Trout has. We don’t have to belittle what Harper has done — he is one of 19 players (*) to post a wRC+ of 115 or higher in his age 20 to 22-year-old seasons (of which Trout is also one). Now if the threshold is moved up to 160 wRC+, only two players exist, Trout and Cobb. An injury slowed down Trout a bit in 2015 (age 23 season), but he still posted a 172 wRC+. It seems people are already getting prospect fatigue with Trout.
While projections aren’t everything, Steamer has them tied in home run talent, but Trout holds the batting average and stolen base advantage. Unless you only look at 2015, I see no way you can reasonably rank Harper higher than Trout.
Reason #2: I don’t buy Harper’s power uptick
Right now, I see Harper fans eyeing his 42 home runs from last season and are hoping for more. The 35 he is projected by Steamer might not even be acceptable for most owners. The problem is that among the 2015 elite home run hitters, he showed some of the worst power. I went and compared him to the other top 11 home run hitters (between 37 and 47 home runs). Harper was near the bottom of almost every batted ball measurement. Taking data from Baseball Savant, ESPN Home Run Tracker, and Baseball Heat Maps, I got an idea where Harper ranked among the top home run hitters. Here are the stats:
Stat:
Avg – MPH: Average batted ball velocity of all recorded batted balls
Avg – FB/LD MPH: Average batted ball velocity of all flyball and line drives
HR+FB Distance: Average distance of all flyball and home runs
ND%: Percentage of home runs which were no doubters
JE%+L%: Percentage of home runs which were just enough or lucky
Avg HR Dist: Average HR ball distance
| Name | HR | Avg – MPH | Avg – FB/LD MPH | HR+FB Dist | ND% | JE%+L% | Avg HR – Ft. |
| Chris Davis | 47 | 92.2 | 97.1 | 316 | 28% | 23% | 404 |
| Nelson Cruz | 44 | 92.8 | 97.3 | 306 | 23% | 34% | 414 |
| Bryce Harper | 42 | 90.9 | 94.3 | 299 | 19% | 43% | 381 |
| Nolan Arenado | 42 | 91.3 | 94.2 | 297 | 17% | 19% | 412 |
| Mike Trout | 41 | 93.2 | 96.7 | 300 | 12% | 41% | 410 |
| Josh Donaldson | 41 | 92.4 | 96.7 | 304 | 34% | 29% | 411 |
| Jose Bautista | 40 | 93.8 | 95.8 | 287 | 35% | 20% | 411 |
| Carlos Gonzalez | 40 | 90.8 | 94.7 | 302 | 28% | 45% | 418 |
| Albert Pujols | 40 | 92.0 | 93.5 | 287 | 28% | 18% | 407 |
| Edwin Encarnacion | 39 | 91.1 | 95.1 | 289 | 44% | 28% | 410 |
| J.D. Martinez | 38 | 91.9 | 96.0 | 305 | 13% | 53% | 398 |
| David Ortiz | 37 | 93.2 | 95.5 | 302 | 30% | 38% | 405 |
Harper never ranked in the top half of any of the categories with his best showing in HR+FB dist with an 8th place finish. The most damning data is in the last three categories on his home runs. His average home run distance (381 ft) was 17 less feet than the next player. Looking over the 2015 average home run distances, his distance ranks near Derek Norris, Ender Inciarte, Juan Lagares and Carlos Beltran.
Right now the top four picks for me are a definite Trout then Harper, then Goldy, then Kershaw, then a mess of a dozen or so players. I could see the debate continue with Harper vs. Trout. The debate will increase emotions and could be good drama. I think it is time to move on to rest of the draft and figure out how to rank the next dozen or so players. With talent seemingly so even, drafts may be won or lost in the 2nd or 3rd round. Concentrate your time worrying about those picks instead of Harper vs. Trout.
* Mike Tiernan, John McGraw, Sherry Magee, Ty Cobb, Stuffy McInnis, Rogers Hornsby, Jimmie Foxx, Mel Ott, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Al Kaline, Frank Robinson, Orlando Cepeda, Vada Pinson, Bob Horner, Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez, Giancarlo Stanton, Mike Trout,
Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.
How could you possibly hit 42 HR’s in a year and avg. only 381 feet in those AB’s. Brain hurts.
I’d be interested in knowing what his avg HR distance is if you remove the 10 shortest HR. If he averaged 400+ and had 32 HR, how different would we view him?
He was also forced to hit a lot of bad balls for HR’s once everyone stopped pitching to him. That probably brought the avg. distance down a bit.
I agree. Having watched a lot of Harper’s AB’s, I saw him knock quite a few bad balls over the fence with just a flick of his wrists. Yeah, they might not have cleared the fence by much, but watching it was an impressive show of his power. Any lesser hitter would have flied out on many of those.
A couple of predictions. Bryce Harper will steal twice as many bases as Mike Trout next year. Harper will approach a 30/30 season. Davey Lopes at first base and Dusty Baker encouraging the kid not to hold back coupled with the sheer number of times he’s going to be on 1st base via the walk. Trout continues to show a disinclination to go back to the running game.
I don’t know, the basepaths are a pretty good spot to get hurt and Harper does not have a great injury history as it is. I assume part of Trout’s declining steals are injury-prevention related as well.
Also, according to the chart in the article, Trout has the most similar HR profile to Harper among the included hitters. So by the logic presented, he too would be a poor bet to reproduce his 2015 HR output.
You can’t spend you’re whole career playing not to get hurt. I just have a feeling there’s going to be a different culture around how to play the game in the Dusty era there. For better or for worse. You don’t bring in Davey Lopes to coach first base unless you plan to do some running.
your whole career…not you’re. Hate it when I do that.
Not to belabor this, but the numbers don’t really support Lopes or Baker inflating SBs. In Lopes’s stints as 1B coach and manager of the Brewers, they ranked 24th (Brewers), 21st (Padres), 5th (Phillies), and 13th (Dodgers). In Baker’s stints as manager, his teams ranked 16th (Giants), 18th (Cubs), and 23rd (Reds). The Phillies years were probably more a product of having Rollins and Victorino in their base stealing primes as well as Werth and Utley to a lesser extent. None of that really points to breakout SB seasons for Harper or any other Nationals, in my opinion.
I don’t think the measure of Lopes impact is total team SBs. I think it’s success rate and also mentoring specific players a la Dee Gordon.
I think a lot of this is going to be about attitude with Harper. I believe they’ll take the training wheels off Harper and encourage him to run. He’s going to be on 1st base via the BB a crapton so he’ll have ample opportunity. He stole 18/24 his rookie year. He definitely has it in him.
On the other hand…23 year olds are stronger than 22 year olds, even big, strong 22 year olds like Harper.
ESPN Home Run Tracker has Harper’s avg HR distance at 400 ft. Why is Baseball Savant’s data different?
That makes much more sense, mathematically speaking
Trout no longer stealing bases is such a bummer. I miss fast Trout.
Trout’s production is like a pot pourri bag of goodies. You don’t know everything you’re gonna get in any single year, but you do know that whatever the goodies are, they’ll all be good.
Love that 44% of Edwin’s homers were no-doubters.
you penalize Harpers lack of power but ignore the fact that Trout hit much less NO DOUBTERs last year
And Trout also had a ton of Just Enoughs.
Nolan Arenado has the most interesting profile to me.
Middling to low MPH (among this group).
Low MPH on Line Drives and Fly Balls.
One of the lowest HR + FB distances.
Very few No Doubters.
But second least number of Just Enoughs and the third highest HR distance.
So his non-HR flyballs are mostly weak and easy outs. Very few of his Home Runs are way over, but he has almost no wall-scrapers, either.
So basically all of his fly balls are like 300 feet, and all of his home runs are like 415.
That’s weird, right?