He’s been scouted since he was a preteen. Since the age of 12, blasting home runs and throwing runners out from his knees 90 to 127 feet away. Bryce Harper has been described as the next prodigy of baseball. If you google “LeBron James of Baseball” you’ll get an article by Tom Verducci from Sports Illustrated explaining the abnormal strength of this boy from Sin City.
Just yesterday that same boy came up to bat for the Washington Nationals. He replaced DH Matt Stairs, who is arguably the greatest the softball player to ever play baseball.
Harper stepped into the box twice on Monday, and contributed nothing but a couple strikeouts to the box score.
For all you National fans don’t drop your head in disappointment yet, it’s not like management even expected him to play in the pros this year. He’s expected to start off in Single-A ball and quickly climb the ladder from there.
But many sports writers, scouts, and even players were anticipating a positive explosion from Harper. Instead he tipped and whiffed his way into the spring training books with two strike outs instead.
I can’t help but compare him to last year’s phenom, Jason Heyward for the Atlanta Braves. In his very first at bat, the 6’5’’ 240 pound behemoth belted a ball over the fence in right field for his first home run in his first major league at bat for the Braves.
Now I’m not saying that Heyward in more impressive than Harper. Let’s face it, there are a couple factors to these two young guns. Heyward first of all, is 3 years older than Bryce. He also spent 3 years in the minors before getting his shot in 2010. With the recent failure of Stephen Strasburg, Bryce will probably be pushed through the farm system a lot faster than Heyward was. We’re also talking about a first major league at bat compared to a first spring training at bat. After all said and done, Heyward hit more than .350 over 41 at bats.
Fortunately, the Spring has barely set in which means there’s plenty of time to boost that .000 batting average.
No comments:
Post a Comment