Bryce Harper could be wearing the uniform of a new team in 2019, and with the sands of time perhaps running out on his tenure with Washington, the Nationals have worked to stack their team for 2017 and 2018. The Nationals made a hard but unsuccessful push to land Chris Sale before they paid heavily for center fielder Adam Eaton. Rival evaluators expect that before the start of spring training, Washington will add at least one high-end closer candidate, such as Greg Holland.
The Nationals were bad for a long time before they picked Harper, Stephen Strasburg and Anthony Rendon at or near the top of the draft. Their championship hopes might reach an apex in 2017 and 2018, before Harper reaches free agency. The Nationals have a lot at stake.
So does Harper. Because he played his first major league game at age 19, he has accomplished so much already, including winning the NL MVP in 2015 and mashing the 100th homer of his career on April 14, 2016. Think about this: Harper is about a year younger than his childhood friend, Kris Bryant.
But for the first time in his life, Harper had a prolonged slump in 2016. He is a diligent student of hitting, so undoubtedly he felt what everybody in the industry saw: an anxious slugger whose right shoulder seemed to turn too soon in his hitting mechanics. He was flying open in his swing, to use professional jargon, and that left him in a terrible position to hit. Theories abound about why this is. The Nationals vehemently denied reports that Harper was dealing with shoulder trouble. Scouts wondered if the hypercompetitive Harper struggled to cope with the fact that pitchers devoted themselves to working around him, with evaluators noting that Harper’s problems began during a series at Wrigley Field in which the Cubs walked him seven times in three games.
Whatever the reason, Harper’s rate of soft-hit balls spiked from 11.9 percent in ’15 to 19.8 percent in ’16, while his rate of hard-hit balls fell. His rate of home runs on balls put in the air dropped to a career low. On May 1, he struck out four times in a game against St. Louis, and from that day onward, a player long seen as a candidate to get the first $400 million contract in history batted .235 with a .392 slugging percentage.
Based on the polling of evaluators to assess the top 10 MLB right fielders, it’s evident that they fully expect Harper to return to his baseball-bashing, hair-flipping self: None placed him lower than second. Harper burns to be great, and presumably, he is deep into his work conquering whatever he thinks ailed him in 2016.
Even so, the majority of evaluators placed Mookie Betts in the No. 1 spot among right fielders, after a season in which Betts was the best player not named Mike Trout.
In part VIII of our ongoing series, the right fielders:
1. Mookie Betts
Last March, David Ortiz stood on Boston’s spring training field in Fort Myers, Florida, waiting for batting practice to begin, and he went on and on and on about Betts, how good he is, how he fixes his swing and his approach to the plate day to day, how much of a leader he already is. Quite simply, Betts excels at everything.
Last season, Betts batted .318, racked up 78 extra-base hits, scored 122 runs and drove in 113. He stole 26 bases in 30 attempts, and with his attention to detail, Betts led all major leaguers -- including Trout -- in one base-running efficiency metric. While playing arguably the most difficult outfield position in baseball -- right field at Fenway Park, with its enormous square footage, the curling wall beyond the Pesky Pole, the low walls in front of the bullpens that have claimed Torii Hunter and other victims -- Betts generated some of the best defensive metrics of any outfielder, with 32 Defensive Runs Saved.
Boston manager John Farrell tells a great story about the first time he saw Betts. After he was taken by Boston in the fifth round of the 2011 draft, Betts went homerless in his first two seasons in the minors, and then, in 2013, he started putting up power numbers. Betts had a .506 slugging percentage that year, and Farrell began to hear about a young, developing hitter with big-time thump and a maturity to his game. The following year, during the exhibition season, the 5-foot-9 Betts joined the big league team in the Boston dugout. “I was thinking, 'That’s Mookie Betts?'” Farrell recalls with a laugh.
Betts apparently was underappreciated in the beginning. But from Ortiz to Farrell to the rest of baseball, everybody knows who he is now.
From Sarah Langs of ESPN Stats & Information: Betts had 9.6 WAR in 2016 in his age-23 season. The only Red Sox player with more WAR in an age-23 season or younger was Ted Williams, who had 10.6 in 1941 in his age-22 season and 10.6 in 1942 at age 23. The only position players overall with higher WAR in age-23 or younger seasons were Williams, Trout, Harper, Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, Eddie Collins, Cal Ripken and Rogers Hornsby.
2. Bryce Harper
It’s worth noting that Harper had a great spring and a great start in 2016. After his first 19 games, he was hitting .328 with nine homers, 24 RBIs, 13 walks and nine strikeouts -- and he was seemingly on his way to a monster season.
Harper showed this winter that he’s really, really strong.
3. Depending on how A.J. Hinch decides to use him and Josh Reddick, Springer could get a lot of playing time in center field. Last year, he made just one start in that spot. Springer led the majors in plate appearances, with 744, and sparked the Astros after being moved into the leadoff spot. He scored 116 runs, with 29 doubles, five triples and 29 homers, and his swing-and-miss rate continues to improve:
2014: 18.6%
2015: 13.9%
2016: 12.4%
Springer did a ton of damage on fastballs last year, and more than with a lot of players, his success or failure was heavily predicated on whether the first pitch was a ball or a strike.
Springer after the count started 1-0: 1.057 OPS in 272 plate appearances
Springer after the count started 0-1: .624 OPS in 366 plate appearances
For the sake of context, here are those splits for all major league hitters in 2016: After a 1-0 count, MLB hitters had a .839 OPS. After an 0-1 count, they had .618. Springer was 102nd of 146 qualified hitters on the OPS after 0-1. He was eighth of those 146 after 1-0.
From Sarah Langs: After starting the season 17-28, the Astros went 67-50 after they moved Springer to the leadoff spot. He hit 20 of his 29 home runs from the leadoff spot, the most by any Astros player hitting first since Craig Biggio had 23 in 2004. The only players to hit 20-plus home runs from the leadoff spot in a season for Houston were Hall of Famer Biggio, who did so four times, and Springer in 2016.
4. He has missed 131 games the past two years and hasn’t stayed on the field enough to put together the big-time, full-season numbers the Marlins (and rival evaluators) expect he’ll generate someday. Stanton went through an odd quarter-season in 2016, when he swung and missed a whole lot: In 175 plate appearances from May 7 to July 2, he had 29 hits and 66 strikeouts.
Stanton is a better all-around player than he’s often given credit for, but because his contract is backloaded, some evaluators now look at his deal -- especially under the more restrictive rules of the new collective bargaining agreement -- as the most difficult to trade. After Stanton makes $14.5 million in salary this year, his pay will jump to $25 million in 2018. The Marlins will then owe him $285 million for the 2018-2027 seasons, not including a $10 million buyout of the ’28 option.
Stanton will have the contractual right to opt out of his contract after the 2020 season, but he would have to walk away from $218 million for the 2021-2027 seasons. There are rival executives who privately assume there’s no chance that he will do that.
5. When he plays, he hits. After he played no more than 145 games in any of his first seven seasons in the big leagues and missed as many as 92 games in a given year, Gonzalez has stayed in the lineup the past two years and accumulated 67 doubles and 65 homers, winning a Silver Slugger Award in 2015.
Gonzalez is a free agent after the upcoming season, in which he will play for $20 million, and depending on how the Rockies fare in the first three months, he could be a midseason trade candidate. Colorado has a surplus of outfielders, and unless the Rockies intend to bestow a big contract on Gonzalez in the next year, it will probably be worthwhile for them to at least consider a trade.
6. Rival evaluators report that the Tigers’ asking price for a Martinez trade is high, and in an offseason market filled with corner outfielder/slugger types, they apparently haven’t developed serious traction. In the end, the Tigers might benefit in the win-loss column by keeping him. As the hitter who generally follows Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez in the Detroit lineup, Martinez hits with a lot of runners on base and fares well. Martinez, 29, posted 59 extra-base hits in 120 games and had a .373 on-base percentage. He will be eligible for free agency after next season.
7. It seems like month to month, the 6-foot-5, 230-pound Polanco figures out how to make his long arms and legs work in his swing. At age 25 last season, he began injecting more power into his offense.
Polanco’s monthly slugging percentage in his career:
June 2014: .375
July 2014: .327
August 2014: .352
September 2014: .286
April 2015: .405
May 2015: .344
June 2015: .249
July 2015: .424
August 2015: .500
September 2015: .339
April 2016: .500
May 2016: .604
June 2016: .420
July 2016: .471
August 2016: .505
September 2016: .291
His rate of ground balls is declining, and as he continues to learn, he’ll do more damage. Polanco’s ground ball/fly ball ratio in his first three seasons:
2014: 1.58
2015: 1.30
2016: 1.05
8. At age 26, he is firmly established in the big leagues, with almost 1,000 plate appearances and a career OPS of .815. With Dexter Fowler entrenched as the Cardinals’ new leadoff hitter, Mike Matheny will have some options for where to hit Piscotty -- and Piscotty might benefit from hitting second, in front of Matt Carpenter. Last year, Piscotty fared much better in the No. 2 hole than anywhere else. That might be related to the timing of when he hit there, over the long season of streaks and slumps, or it might indicate an aptitude to take advantage of a good hitting situation.
Piscotty by lineup spot in 2016:
No. 2: .904 OPS
No. 3: .657 OPS
No. 4: .797 OPS
No. 5: .539 OPS (in 11 at-bats)
9. Hunter Pence
A former coach once said dismissively (and counterintuitively) of Cris Carter that all he does is catch touchdowns. A similar mantra could be applied to Hunter Pence, through his unconventional swing and playing style and recent injuries: All he does is win. The 33-year-old missed 110 games in 2015 and 56 more in 2016, through hamstring trouble, but when Pence played the past two years, the Giants were 30 games over .500. When he didn’t play, they were eight games under .500, and manager Bruce Bochy talks about how much of a difference Pence's power and energy mean to the team over the long season. Pence is about to enter the fourth year of his five-year, $90 million contract.
10. Kole Calhoun
He has been a steady player in the big leagues, and last year, he had a .786 OPS, scored 91 runs and had a higher fWAR (4.0) than Harper, Polanco, Mark Trumbo or Martinez did.
Honorable mention
Josh Reddick, Houston: There was some surprise among rival evaluators that Houston made the investment of $52 million in Reddick, who did not look good after being dealt to the Dodgers and is widely viewed as a platoon player. Reddick batted .155 with zero extra-base hits in 97 at-bats against lefties last year. But he has shown that he can crush right-handers: He has an .847 OPS versus righties the past three seasons, and in a Houston lineup comprised mostly of right-handed hitters, he’ll be a weapon.
Nomar Mazara, Rangers: The 21-year-old played an enormous role in the Rangers’ division title last season, as he helped Texas through an important time early in the season. He batted .227 after June 11, but as he matures as a hitter, he’ll move into the top 10.
Jose Bautista, free agent: Limited by injury to 116 games last season, Bautista still put together what would typically be seen as a pretty good year: .366 OBP and 22 homers. Whenever he signs, the 36-year-old Bautista is probably going to have to accept much less than what he expected last spring, and the team that signs him will land a really good hitter.
Wild card: Yasmany Tomas: Because of his size, he had to move out of the infield and has struggled in his outfield defense. But he has spent this winter working on his conditioning, and if he becomes even a slightly below average outfielder, he would seem to have a chance to have an impact. He hit .294 with 18 homers in the second half of last season, and he has hit at home and on the road.