Why Bryce Harper gets a free pass with nerds

I spend all day reading about baseball. When I’m not reading about baseball, I’m writing about baseball. When I’m not writing about baseball, I’m chatting on Twitter with other people who read and/or write about baseball all day. We all have our disagreements, but there are some truisms we all take for granted. I don’t spend a lot of time, for example, trying to convince people that on-base percentage is more useful than batting average.

Occasionally, this perfect Internet bubble is pierced with the lance of the great unwashed. We have to deal with the opinions of regulars, and it’s just so frightful.

Take Bryce Harper. There are people who actually want the Nationals to send him to the minors. They were discussing it on “Pardon the Horn” or “Around the Interruption” or “Shut Up Or I Yell More Louder” yesterday, and it appears to be talk radio fodder around the Beltway. There are honest, actual conversations about sending Harper to the minors. We here in the gilded bubble were alternately amused and horrified at the silly idea.

But why is it a silly idea? Why is it dismissed out of hand? Why does Bryce Harper get a free pass with nerds?

Couple reasons ...

Start with the baseline: It’s okay to be ordinary. Take the name “Bryce Harper” out of the discussion if that helps. He was burdened with expectations, which are some serious first-world millionaire problems, but forget about those. If Bryce Harper hit .270 with 20 homers for the next 10 seasons, he would be one of the best players in baseball history. Maybe not a Hall of Famer, maybe not even a regular All-Star. But certainly a Hall of Nearly Greater. If you think that’s hyperbole, remember that just 315 players have hit 200 homers in their careers, and not all of them had the baserunning, patience, and average that Harper’s already shown. If he doesn’t improve a lick from last year, he’s already really good.

If he doesn’t improve a lick from last year, he’s already really good.

And you know what really good players do? They slump. They go through funks. They have 30-homer seasons and they have 15-homer seasons. They get hurt, they get healthy. They look like they’ve never seen a slider before, they look like super-advanced aliens trying to pass for a normal player in a charming family movie.

Yet the likely scenario is that Harper returns to form. Actually, that’s something of a worst-case scenario, because ...

I know you know this. Even the people screaming about sending him to the minors know this; that’s part of the warped argument. But it’s one of those things that absolutely never gets old, like pretending you can’t see the head of a Padres player when they wear camouflage hats. Like the name Randy Johnson, which is an adjective meaning “amorous and frisky” paired with a noun meaning “male sex organ” wrapped in a nickname of “The Big Unit” and applied to a gigantic man who walked out of a Popeye comic. That does not -- does not -- get less amazing with familiarity.

Same with Harper’s preternatural ability to hit. When Harper was rehabbing in the Carolina League, High-A, he was still one of the 20 youngest hitters in the league. When he moved up to Double-A, he was one of the 10 youngest hitters in the league, and the youngest hitter on his team. This doesn’t get less amazing with repetition. In three years, he will be as old as Astros rookie George Springer is now.

A list of hitters with 40 homers before turning 22:

He could be Ruben Sierra, I suppose. But when you look at a 20-deep list and immediately pick one of the one or two worst-case scenarios, you’re probably not taking full advantage of what the list is trying to tell you. The odds are excellent that Harper gets better if he stays healthy. Him getting better while playing for Syracuse isn’t going to help the Nationals, and the odds of anyone else hitting better over the next two months are minuscule.

Being young in the majors is a big deal. Harper hasn’t hit 40 homers in a season yet, but his age is why the nerds are patient with him.

After a 2-for-3 game on July 29, Harper was hitting .268, with a .354 on-base percentage and a .395 slugging percentage. The average and on-base percentage were right in line with what he did in his first two years -- see points 1 and 2 above -- but the power is way down, likely because of his thumb injury. Since then: a 4-for-27 slump and chatter about sending him to the minors.

Sending Harper to the minors isn’t going to help him hit for power. His thumb is the problem, not the overwhelming pitching he’s facing (and already succeeded against) in the majors.

If you want to look for legitimate negatives, things that should worry you, the litany of injuries is a concern. He’s had knee problems that required surgery, hip soreness, hip inflammation, and thigh strains, and that’s before you get into the injuries caused by his style of play (running into walls, using bats inappropriately following a strikeout). If you want me to put down $50 that he’ll make the Hall of Fame, I’ll politely decline and point to that list. A lot can happen on the way to Cooperstown. A lot can happen on the way to Cincinnati next year, too.

But those concerns aren’t the same as “send Harper down” or “Harper is a bust.” Those two statements read like the ramblings of a delirious, feverish, sick person to baseball nerds. If you’re wondering why we’re wrinkling our noses and looking at the general, down-on-Harper baseball fans like they just said “Boondock Saints is one of the greatest American movies,” that’s why. He’s been good recently, he’s young enough to get better, and overreacting to slumps seems like a great way to screw up a baseball team.