PHILADELPHIA -- His teammates know the face. Bryce Harper, 30 years old, veteran of 11 major league seasons, will walk into the dugout before a game with a particular sort of mien, one that tells the Philadelphia Phillies it's time for business. Mouth deadened, eyes narrowed, neck ramrod straight, Harper's expression is expressionless.
"It's like when he looks at you, he's looking through you," Phillies outfielder Brandon Marsh said. "Because he is not focused on you. He's focused on what's to come."
What has come, over the past month, as the Phillies paraded from the cusp of a regular-season finale to that of a World Series championship, is Harper, already one of baseball's best players, at his finest. His majestic first-inning home run in Game 3 on Tuesday night -- on the first pitch he saw at the Phillies' first World Series game at Citizens Bank Park in 13 years -- commenced the five-homer barrage that propelled the Phillies to a 7-0 victory and two-games-to-one lead over the Houston Astros.
It was only Harper's latest feat, another highlight in the postseason of his life, or, for that matter, anyone's life. In 14 playoff games, Harper is hitting .382/.414/.818 with six home runs and 13 RBIs. Of all players with at least 50 plate appearances in a single postseason, Harper's OPS of 1.232 ranks 11th all time. "That dude," Marsh said, "is locked." Which warrants the question: If Harper is so in control this postseason, what exactly are the Astros doing still pitching to him?
"Still don't know," Phillies first baseman Rhys Hoskins said. "I hope they continue to."
The answer is, in fact, hard to pin down. It's where the emotional ("Don't!") intersects with the situational ("It depends!"). It includes the philosophical (pitch selection) and the ability to execute (which many lack). Even when it works -- the Astros got Harper out in his final three at-bats in Game 3 -- it's often too late, his opponents already having paid a hefty price.
In other words, pitching to Bryce Harper is a calculated risk -- and this postseason, it generally has ended without commensurate reward.
Before trying to decipher whether pitching around Harper would be the right move, it's important to understand how teams have approached him thus far.
Harper's regular season should be split into two: pre- and post-injury. Before a Blake Snell fastball broke Harper's left thumb on June 25, pitchers threw him fastballs 43.3% of the time, and he crushed them: .333/.423/.635 with seven home runs. Following Harper's return Aug. 26 through the end of the season, pitchers threw fastballs 47.8% of the time and neutralized him: .217/.345/.304 with no home runs in 55 plate appearances that ended on the pitch.
The book on Harper, according to two scouts who advanced the Phillies heading into the playoffs, was simple: pound him with high, inside fastballs, and he'll struggle. Teams adhered to the fastball-first philosophy. The up-and-in part was the problem, and Harper's ability to punish mislocated pitches -- an enormous reason the Phillies made the World Series at all -- has continued to make the difference.
In the first three rounds, Harper faced fastballs 48.5% of the time and went 10-for-18 with three doubles, three home runs and a 1.222 slugging percentage. Even better were his numbers against fastballs with men on base: a .636 batting average and 1.364 slug. And worst of all for pitchers were the numbers with a man on first base only, when teams are less likely to pitch around him. It's then that Harper has done the majority of his damage in the playoffs: two singles, two doubles, two home runs and six RBIs in eight at-bats, a .750 batting average and 1.750 slug.
Of the 45 pitches Harper faced in the first three rounds with a man on first, an almost unimaginable 36 were fastballs. And of those 36, 21 were in the rulebook strike zone -- 58.3%.
"I have to imagine that the other side is saying, 'Hey, this is the guy we're not going to let beat us,'" Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto said. "And they continue giving him pitches in the strike zone. And he's not missing them. He gets maybe one, one to two good pitches to hit every day, which is more than he should."
After Harper's early-postseason success, the Astros could have throttled back the fastball-first approach. Instead, they embraced it -- and they've done what those before them couldn't. Of the 44 pitches thrown to Harper in the World Series, 30 have been fastballs -- and Harper is 1-for-7 on at-bats that end in heaters. The six outs all came on fastballs in the upper half of the strike zone, the one single on a pitch that leaked toward the bottom.
In Game 3, though, Harper knew that would change, at least during the early innings. Astros starter Lance McCullers Jr. entered the game having thrown 74 pitches to left-handed hitters this postseason: 27 sliders, 25 curveballs, 19 changeups, two cutters and one fastball. With Kyle Schwarber on first -- because of course there was a runner on first, and of course Harper would continue to thrive despite hitting .232/.337/.354 in such situations during the regular season, small-sample baseball the fickle beast it is -- McCullers hung a first-pitch curveball, and Harper deposited it 402 feet into the raucous right-field bleachers at Citizens Bank Park.
By the end of Game 3, he was hitting .324/.324/.676 with the bases empty this postseason, a line worth celebrating. His numbers with runners on, meanwhile, were worthier of ogling: .476/.542/1.048.
"Bryce Harper has had a star by his name since he's been playing baseball," McCullers said. "It was a bad pitch, 0-0. I understand. I told myself before the at-bat, 'Don't let him beat you here.'"
Beaten he was. McCullers rationalized that Nick Castellanos hits behind Harper -- "and he's no slouch," McCullers said. This much is true, and among him and the three hitters regularly in front of Harper, Schwarber, Hoskins and Realmuto, the Phillies' lineup depth offers Harper both the ability to hit with runners on (25 of 59 postseason plate appearances) and protection to guard against opponents pitching around him.
"It's somebody different every night. Well, it's Bryce most nights, but everybody is finding a way to contribute," said Castellanos, who himself is batting .318 with runners on this postseason. "And if somebody doesn't, somebody else is picking them up."
The Astros have shown a willingness to maneuver around Harper when necessary. With runners on first and second in the seventh inning of Game 1 and the score tied at 5, Bryan Abreu followed a low first-pitch fastball with four sliders -- none of which caught the middle of the plate -- and walked the bases loaded, only to see Castellanos strike out and end the threat.
"We pitched him very careful," Astros pitching coach Josh Miller said. "You don't want to put guys on base. You don't want to walk guys intentionally, in my opinion, unless the situation specifically calls for it. But, yeah, he's red-hot, a really great hitter, one of the star power guys in the league, and we really have to be on our game and execute it."
That's where the failure is happening -- and it's particularly frustrating for pitchers because Harper has shown vulnerability this postseason. For a player whose plate discipline is among his best qualities, Harper has been frothing to swing, hacking at 65.6% of postseason pitches compared to 56.2% in the regular season. He stared at balls on 34.6% of pitches in the regular season and is at 28.7% during the playoffs. His swing-and-miss rate continues to climb: 15.9% in the regular season, 19.4% during the first three rounds and 29.5% in the World Series. He has only two unintentional walks in those 59 plate appearances.
In other words, Bryce Harper is beatable. He's just not getting beaten. Astros catcher Martin Maldonado declined to comment when asked whether the team was taking the right approach against a guy having an all-time postseason.
"You've got to ask Dusty [Baker, the Astros' manager]. That's not my call," Maldonado said. "My job is to get them out."
Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm, too, had no good answer when asked whether he thought the Astros should pitch around Harper. "It's pick your poison," he said. "He's going to obviously get out sometimes, and it's hard to concede a free baserunner every time. You don't want to just give people free baserunners, especially this time of year."
Nor, Bohm conceded, do the Phillies' opponents want to give Harper an open invitation to devastate them. Such is the conundrum the Astros face for the remainder of the series. Pitching against Harper often leads to bad things. Pitching around Harper could do the same. He has holes. But capitalizing on them often proves too cumbersome.
It's quite the Catch-22 -- though for some, the answer is nevertheless clear.
"Nothing against any of the rest of us on this team," Realmuto said, "but I'm certainly preparing for them saying, 'This guy's not beating me in any situation.'"