When he met with reporters before last night’s game, Dusty Baker responded to the latest article from SI.com’s Tom Verducci which discussed Bryce Harper’s struggles at the plate and rumors of a neck/shoulder issue plaguing the 23-year-old defending NL MVP for the last few months.
Harper missed a few days early in August with neck “stiffness”, but avoided a DL stint and eventually returned to the lineup, though he’s continued to struggle offensively.
As detailed by Verducci, and others, there are signs (exit velocity, AVG vs fastballs in the outer third of the zone, etc.) that suggest Harper is not playing at 100%.
As for the story as a whole, however, Baker said it’s simply inaccurate.
“The story is inaccurate,” Baker reiterated, as quoted by MASN’s Byron Kerr:
“They asked me about his shoulder problem before. I said exactly that, we gave him four or five days off. I don’t even know how long ago that was, six weeks ago?
“They said he was playing shallow because he couldn’t throw the ball; that’s totally inaccurate. I don’t know where they got that from. I know they had some quotes behind me on that, but I was talking about the past, I wasn’t talking about the present. I don’t know how it came out.
“That was inaccurate reporting. Bryce said that it didn’t come from him. Nobody knows where it comes from because it’s not on the injury report. Our trainer said no. We treated that shoulder already in the past. And if I did make a mistake, it was in his neck, which is connected to the shoulder.”
Nationals’ GM Mike Rizzo, in an at-times-contentious appearance on 106.7 the FAN in D.C.’s The Sports Junkies this morning, responded to Verducci’s latest article.
“We’re saying the same thing that we’ve said for the last month,” Rizzo explained, “that [Harper is] healthy and he is and we’re moving on with it. There’s really nothing to add to it.
“There’s no shoulder issues, there’s no shoulder problems. He had the neck issue for about five days, we held him out and that’s it.”
“The information of him having a shoulder issue is inaccurate,” Rizzo said.
“What more can I say? I sat with the player, the trainer, the team physician, and the manager in his office and asked the pertinent questions that you would ask the player, straight out, like we attack every player here and he does not have a shoulder issue.”
So what does he make of the reports? Verducci is clearly hearing from someone that the shoulder is an issue that has led to Harper’s numbers falling off considerably, not only from his MVP-caliber season in 2015, but his career marks.
Rizzo said he wasn’t sure why there is such skepticism about what the Nationals are saying.
“I don’t know why people are skeptical,” he said. “I haven’t been very ambiguous about it. I’ve been pretty black and white about it. The player is not hurt. I don’t know why the reports are out there.
“I don’t know if Tom Verducci or anybody else is trying to give an alibi for Harp for not performing up to his MVP-caliber season.
“This guy is one of the greatest players in all of baseball [and] does not need a reason or an excuse from somebody to give him a reason for not performing. He’s a healthy player.”
But, his numbers are obviously down, right?
“From his MVP season they are, yes,” Rizzo said.
But he has, “... 24 homers, 81 RBIs, .390 on-base percentage and he’s still a 4.5 WAR player,” Rizzo added.
Rizzo was speaking extemporaneously, of course, so he overstated the OBP a little, and Fangraphs has him at one less win in terms of WAR.
After 140 games and 596 plate appearances this season, Harper has a .240/.374/.441 line with 22 doubles, 24 HRs and 82 RBIs. He’s been worth +3.4 fWAR (down from 9.5 last season) according to Fangraphs and Baseball-reference has him at 1.3 bWAR, down from 9.9 bWAR last season.
So what is going on then?
And what about Baker’s statement in Verducci’s article, which quoted the manager saying, "He’ll figure it out. He won’t admit it, but his balance is off. What does Rizzo think?
“There’s a lot of things that go into it and it’s such a complicated subject,” he said.
“Harp’s approach, along with anybody else’s approach who’s struggling to regain his form — He’s got bat speed, he’s got strength, he’s got power — it’s often a balance issue, which tends to — guys [tend to] be over-aggressive at the plate, to lunge at times, to lose the strike zone, where you’re swinging at pitches outside your comfort zone, outside the strike zone, getting behind in the count, missing your pitches.
“There’s a lot that goes into it. Great hitters get out of things just by hitting and like I’ve said all along, this is a guy that’s one of the best players in the game and one day he’s going to snap out of it and get on a roll and carry this team for a long, long time.”