Bryce Harper is a spectacular hitter and player to watch. Any fan going to a game to watch him will see how truly of a good player he is. There are some concerns rising with Harper though, more than we’ve ever seen in the last few years. With his stats becoming more inconsistent by the year, we’ve started to question whether this is going to affect him in free agency very much. This is a great question to dive in to, because there will be some teams trying to take Harper, but you have to know his worth before you actually sign him. In this article, I’ll go in-depth to see what Harper is worth, and if it’s $400 million.
The reason people have started to doubt the claim of him getting $400 million is because of the season he is having this year. He has a .219 AVG, 19 HR, 46 RBI, .361 OBP, .480 SLG, .841 OPS, 60 walks, 77 strikeouts, and 59 hits. Looking at the average alone makes you wonder why people were considering dumping a truckload of money on his doorstep, but if you look in-depth, he’s actually having a solid season. An .841 OPS is good, as well as his walks and SLG. The problem is, for what Harper has shown the league what he can do, these stats are mediocre compared to his full form as a player. I mean, the guy put up a season with an OPS of 1.109 when he was 22. For a player that inexperienced, that’s unbelievable. Since then though, we’ve seen a lot of inconsistency with his OPS. To show you this simply, I’ve condensed it all into a chart.
All of this comes out to a career .896. That is very good, but I wouldn’t pay anyone $400 million for that career OPS. To give you an example of why that’s not worth $400 million, former MVP and Pirates star Andrew McCutchen has a career OPS of .862. Cutch is awesome, but no one has recommended the idea of him getting anything near $400 million. Another thing about Harper has been his inconsistent batting average over the last 5 years. As you can see in the chart below, his average has been insanely high for one year and low another year.
Now, I really don’t want to hear the crappy argument of “Well, well, on-base percentage is better than batting average, so this doesn’t matter!” In the $400 million argument, that statement is incredibly irrelevant. Harper does have a great career on-base percentage of .384. The thing is, I’m not paying $400 million for a guy who just walks a lot. I’m paying for their ability to get hits, extra base hits, and especially homers. However, this is Harper’s specialty.
A big argument for Harper getting $400 million is his ability to hit 450 foot bombs, and you can’t deny this. His average home runs for a year with over 400 at-bats for Bryce is 27.4. This doesn’t seem very interesting, but I have a different, interesting stat to look at. Over the last 4 years, Harper has averaged 430 at-bats in a season and 28.5 homers per year, giving him a 6.6% chance to hit a homer per at-bat for the last 4 years. This may seem bad, but comparing it to Nelson Cruz, who consistently reaches almost 40 or over 40 homers each year, it’s not bad, because Cruz has had a 7.3% chance to hit a homer per at-bat the last 4 years. For this year, Harper’s chance to get a homer per at-bat is 6.9%, which is pretty good. It basically means that for every 14 at-bats, Harper is statistically guarenteed one home run. That’s like every 5 games at max if he only gets 3 at-bats per game.
Another argument for Harper gaining $400 million are his overall batting stats. Although he has looked rocky recently, he has career stats of a .279 AVG, 169 HR, 467 RBI, .384 OBP, .512 SLG, and a .896 OPS. This gets even more impressive when you realize that Harper is only 25, so he realistically can still be considered a developing player (although I doubt he is). A 8-10 year contract does seem very realistic for Bryce due to his young age whether or not it’s worth $400 million. Despite the fact I also denounced his walks as irrelevant, his 515 walks are pretty impressive, and he has a 14.2% chance to get a walk in a plate appearance for his career. It’s just a side bonus though, and shouldn’t be a main argument for the $400 million talks, as a lot of pitchers are scared to have Harper launch a baseball to another city against them.
So, now that I have presented some decent arguments for whether Harper should get $400 million or not, time for the big question. Should he get $400 million? In my opinion, no. His career stats are really solid, but keep in mind this is $400 million. I mean, David Price didn’t even get $250 million despite the fact that he only had one year with an ERA over 3.5 in his 8 years before free agency. In my opinion, he deserves a contract of 8-9 years and $250 million. If he was 29 with these stats, it would probably be $200-$210 million, but he’s 25, so that’s a key factor in these talks. Also, we are now entering an era where GMs are speculating with free agents after bad deals with players like Price and Jason Heyward, so $250 million for 8-9 years is a good deal for Bryce in my opinion.
The MLB Enthusiast 