Five months after an elbow ligament reconstruction, and three weeks before being cleared to play as a designated hitter, Bryce Harper went to the Phillies last April with an idea. He wanted to learn a new position.
If team officials didn’t know better, they might have thought the face of the franchise was having a mid-career crisis.
Wait, mid-career? Harper made his major-league debut 12 years ago. Can he really be only halfway to the finish line?
Bryce Harper not the only star making a position switch: ‘Nowadays, it’s about adaptability’“He has been in the league forever, and then you look and he’s only 31,” said second baseman Bryson Stott, who grew up around Harper in Las Vegas and knows him better than anyone in the Phillies’ clubhouse. “It’s like, what in the world?”
Indeed, Harper’s career bends time. He was a 19-year-old rookie in 2012 and won his first National League MVP at age 22 in 2015. He signed with the Phillies for $330 million when he was 26, won another MVP at 28, and will be 38 in 2031 at the end of his 13-year contract.
And because he is set on playing into his 40s (hold that thought), he’s only just moving into baseball middle age in a career that could lead to the Hall of Fame.
But Harper didn’t volunteer to play first base last year because he craved a challenge bigger than completing the fastest return on record from Tommy John elbow surgery or because he was bored with DHing. He did it because he thought it would help push the Phillies closer to winning the World Series.
And that’s what matters most to Harper as he makes the turn and enters the back nine of his career.
“Moving over to first base is going to be a new adventure for me for a full year, but I’m looking forward to it,” Harper said in a wide-ranging conversation in spring training. “I’m looking forward to trying to be great over there. Everything I do, I try to be great at. I think you know that.”
Here’s something else we know: It’s rare for a star player at the peak of his powers to do what Harper is doing.
Only Alex Rodriguez, Robin Yount, Stan Musial, and Hank Greenberg won an MVP at multiple positions. Craig Biggio and Paul Molitor are among Hall of Famers who split their careers between two positions. Miguel Cabrera will join them in a few years.
Usually, though, it tends to happen closer to the end of a player’s career.
“Obviously I want to be named with those guys, but also I just want to go out and be really good for my team,” Harper said. “I just want to win. Because at the end of the day, that’s what matters. You want the results of winning.”
Harper’s commitment to winning is undeniable.
When he signed with the Phillies in February 2019 and was introduced in a top-of-the-dugout news conference at their spring-training ballpark in Clearwater, he vowed to recruit other big-name players. Over the years, he has lobbied management to re-sign J.T. Realmuto and made pitches to Nick Castellanos, Trea Turner, and others.
Last month, as spring training began, Harper asked president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski if he could call free-agent utilityman Whit Merrifield. The Phillies were interested in Merrifield, who played college baseball at South Carolina from 2008 to 2010, missing Harper’s older brother, Bryan, by a year.
Dombrowski agreed. Within two weeks, Merrifield accepted the Phillies’ $8 million offer. Asked what Harper told him, Merrifield said the message was straightforward.
Staying at first shows Bryce Harper’s commitment to Phillies — and an expectation they will pay him back“[He said], ‘We’re going to win,’ ” Merrifield said. “And that’s something that has eluded me for a long time in my career.”
Harper doesn’t take his opportunities for granted. In 2012, he played in the postseason as a rookie with the Nationals and became the second-youngest player after Andruw Jones to homer in a playoff game.
“All I could think about that year was Dan Marino getting [to the Super Bowl] and never getting back, you know?” Harper said. “I think you have to cherish those moments and know how hard it is as a team and as a group to get to that point.”
The Nationals made the playoffs in four of his first six seasons, but never won a series. It wasn’t until 2019, Harper’s first year with the Phillies, that Washington went all the way.
Coincidence? Definitely. But Turner, the Nationals’ championship shortstop, has witnessed a difference in Harper since reuniting with him in Philadelphia.
“Just the voice to the front office is the one thing that I think sticks out,” Turner said. “Early on [in his career], he was a leader. He was obviously right in the middle of things. But I didn’t think he necessarily talked to the front office as much, and being a younger player, it’s not something you really do.
“As you get older and you get that experience, he can communicate with Dave and [owner] John [Middleton] to advocate for things. I think that’s a big positive for a team and a clubhouse if that street is open, and Bryce does a really, really good job of that.”
Take, for example, when Rhys Hoskins tore the ACL in his left knee near the end of spring training last year, Darick Hall had thumb surgery in April, and Alec Bohm had to ping-pong between third base and first.
Harper thought he could help. An outfielder since the Nationals drafted him first overall in 2010, he asked Dombrowski and manager Rob Thomson if he could take grounders at first base. Harper began a tutorial with infield coach Bobby Dickerson that got more intense once he was cleared to throw.
A three-month crash course culminated with Harper crashing into the camera well in pursuit of a foul pop in his first-base debut on July 21 in Cleveland. (He caught it, naturally.)
Lo and behold, the Phillies had a new first baseman.
“He wants to do everything he can for this team and for John and for the city of Philadelphia,“ Stott said. “I think him going into the second half of his career, he’s ready for that. I guess you could say he looks at it as a challenge, but his work is still the same, his routine is still the same that he’s been doing since he was 19. I think he’s ready to go.”
Although Harper started 36 regular-season games at first base — and all 13 postseason games — and enjoyed being closer to the action and involved in more plays, the Phillies didn’t make the position change permanent until they met with him in November.
Harper told Dombrowski that he didn’t have a positional preference. Dombrowski said the Phillies liked him at first base because it enabled them to optimize for defense in the outfield with Brandon Marsh and Johan Rojas. They also think first base will put less strain on Harper’s cranky back.
And with the benefit of a full spring training, Dickerson believes Harper can win a Gold Glove. The Phillies haven’t had a Gold Glove first baseman since Bill White in 1966.
Bryce Harper not the only star making a position switch: ‘Nowadays, it’s about adaptability’But Harper’s motivation is less personal.
“I’m looking forward to being really good over there, not for myself, but this whole team and every guy in that infield,” Harper said. “Because they’re all going to rely on me for their Gold Gloves, and our pitchers are going to rely heavily on me over there, as well.
“Being able to work with Bo [Larry Bowa] and Dicky, I don’t think they or anybody else in the front office would’ve let me do this if they didn’t think I was going to take it serious and try to be really good at it.”
Harper has been so good that he has outkicked his contract through five years.
The Phillies have paid him $110.93 million, including the 37% prorated salary that all players received in the 60-game 2020 season. Harper has totaled 18.2 wins above replacement, according to FanGraphs, which values each win at roughly $8 million. Based on that wins-to-dollars formula, his bang has been worth approximately $145.6 million.
Harper’s sense of timing has been impeccable, with a catalog of clutch hits punctuated by his pennant-clinching homer in 2022. So, he raised eyebrows in December when agent Scott Boras relayed Harper’s interest in revising his contract with eight years and $203.1 million remaining, an unprecedented request in baseball’s non-salary-capped world.
”I want to be here for a long time, playing into my 40s,” Harper said. “That’s the biggest thing for me, so I want to get that done.”
Middleton, who shares Harper’s manic championship drive and only half-kiddingly referred to Harper as “underpaid” during the 2022 playoff run, has suggested it will — eventually.
Perhaps after Harper wins the World Series that eluded him in the first half of his career, the pot of even more gold at the end of the crowning achievement of his second act.
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