He's playing in low A. This is what he did this week:

.500/.600/1.250 (8-for-16),
4 HR
3 2B
10 RBIs
5 R
4 BB
4 SO
2-for-2 SB.

September callup, or sooner?

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We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.- Eric Hoffer

Wow.

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

It wouldn't shock me. He's only 18 but he destroys every level he plays in. He'll quickly be moved up to high A or even double A. I could see the Nats trying to attract some fans to an empty ballpark in September.

That's exactly what I was thinking, Keyser. He'll see some time this season.

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We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.- Eric Hoffer

Come see the debut of future superstar Bryce Harper. We'll also have punch and pie!

More people will come if you have punch and pie.

In related news:

Come on out to the mildly friendly confines of Wrigley Field. Discount beer and dogs, and we'll have punch and pie.

You're welcome Tom, where's my paycheck.

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The difference in talent between Low A and AA is huge. That being said, his stats for an 18 year old in Low A are very impressive.

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That's my purse! I don't know you!

I dont even think its a question of If he'll be a September call up.

The question is will they wait that long.


Ya see....my guy couldnt see. And now he can so look the fuck out!

Bryce Harper Can See You Now

The world learned officially April 20 that Bryce Harper(notes) was not some baseball cyborg built to take over the game. One would imagine that if a robotic race were intent upon domination, it would at least have given its scion a pair of eyes impervious to astigmatism.

For the last few years, Harper’s unparalleled domination of the amateur baseball world came with a pair of peepers far short of 20/20. When he started his first professional season 7-for-31 at Class A Hagerstown after signing for $9.9 million with the Washington Nationals, Harper traveled to Washington to take a vision test.

He couldn’t get much past the big letters. The eye doctor fitted him for a pair of contact lenses. Harper said he felt like he was seeing in HD. He’s hitting like it, too.


Bryce Harper is a terror with the bat and he’s looking less and less like a converted catcher in the outfield.

(US Presswire)
Since his slow start – and since around the time he started wearing contacts – Harper is 29 of 66 (.439) with six home runs, and his 1.161 OPS ranks second in the South Atlantic League behind Matt Curry, who turns 23 in July. Harper is 18 years old, and it’s the beyond-his-years tools that prompted one scout to file what he called “the most glowing report since A-Rod.”

Everyone who sees Harper, it seems, falls in love with his game. It’s not just the 6-foot-3, 230-pound frame, or the left-handed swing that should be measured in foot-pounds of torque, or the abandon with which he’s playing the outfield, where he looks nothing like a converted catcher.

“Just the way he plays,” said Gary Robinson, the manager of the West Virginia Power. “He believes in his ability, and he has a lot. Learning to trust yourself and your ability might be the hardest thing there is to do for a young player. I don’t see that in this kid. I think he’s going to have to change some of the things he does with regards to actually playing the game, but the genuine love for playing the game and playing it hard and being the best player he can be is very evident.”

By change, Robinson meant the 100-mph speed at which Harper plays, not the incident between Hagerstown and West Virginia that resulted in emptied benches. West Virginia pitcher Tyler Waldron yakked at Harper after striking him out. Harper didn’t take kindly. Nothing came of it, other than knee-jerk concerns about Harper’s maturity that cropped up last year.

“I like his makeup,” Robinson said. “No concerns there.”

“It’s phenomenal,” said Bill Richardson, manager of the Hickory Crawdads. “I put it almost above a player’s skill set. It’s what separates ‘em. And the way he plays is fun to watch.”

Richardson got the first look at the new-and-improved Harper in his initial series with contacts. And the day after he started wearing them …

1. Bryce Harper took an outside pitch and yanked it far over the right-field wall.

“We were trying to pitch in,” Richardson said. “We were unable to do that. That has something to do with Bryce Harper. You don’t want to be the guy who gives up the 500-foot job. So we ended up giving up a couple 375-foot ones.”

Before the first game of the series, Richardson implored his staff to pitch inside to Harper. It was evident what he could do with pitches over the plate. The Power pitchers, Richardson said, looked forward to facing Harper – to being able to say they struck out the most-hyped position player since Alex Rodriguez(notes) nearly 20 years ago.

That’s his life now, and it’s going to be that way well past this decade. Harper might as well take a red can of spray paint to his jersey and draw concentric circles. He is the pelt for every pitcher in the South Atlantic League now, and the Carolina League next, and then the Eastern League, and, well, there won’t be much left to accomplish after that.

The Next Natural

HAGERSTOWN, Maryland - On the day Bryce Harper walked into the eye doctor’s office, he was, he would say later, “blind as a bat.”

Keith Smithson, the Washington Nationals’ team optometrist, asked Harper to read an eye chart, then looked at him with astonishment and said, according to Harper: “I don’t know how you ever hit before. You have some of the worst eyes I’ve ever seen.”

That was on April 19.

The next night, fitted with a new pair of contact lenses, Harper, batting just .231 at the time for the low-Class A Hagerstown Suns of the South Atlantic League, had a double and a single against the visiting Hickory Crawdads.

The next night, he homered. And the night after that, he singled, doubled, homered and drove in six runs.

“It was like I was seeing in HD,” Harper says a month later.

Suffice it to say Harper’s hi-def vision is a huge upgrade over standard-def. In the 30 games after his visit to the eye doctor, Harper hit nearly .500 (52 for 112) with a .560 on-base percentage and an .893 slugging percentage — with seven homers, 14 doubles and 27 RBIs.

For the season, through games of May 20, he is hitting .358/.439/.642, leading the league in all three “slash-line” categories.

Oh, and lest you forgot, he’s only 18 years old, the youngest player in the “Sally” League. His next closest pursuer in OPS (on-base plus slugging), first baseman Matt Curry of the West Virginia Power, is almost 23.

Harper’s classmates at Las Vegas High — the ones he left behind after sophomore year to pass his GED tests with flying colours and enrol in a junior college in order to speed up his draft eligibility — are preparing for their senior prom.

Harper’s offensive rampage, which included a 19-game hitting streak, raises two important questions:

How did he become the top amateur player in the nation in 2010 — and the No. 1 overall draft pick, taken by the Washington Nationals — as well as arguably the greatest hitting prospect in Major League Baseball draft history, when he was “blind as a bat” prior to his being fitted with contacts?

And secondly, what in the world is he still doing here in Hagerstown?

To the first question, Harper merely shrugs and says, “I don’t know,” apparently being too modest to tell the truth, which is: That’s just how good he was.

“I needed the contacts in college,” he says. “I tried them for a while in high school, and they gave me headaches really bad. So I just got by without them. But these are a new kind of lenses, and they really help. The difference in vision is huge.”

The second question — why is Harper still in Hagerstown — is a bit more complicated. A promotion to high-Class A Potomac is almost certainly coming, just not soon enough to satisfy the legions of Nationals fans who want to see him promoted (ideally to Washington) today, if not yesterday.

“We haven’t had any discussions about moving him at all,” says Doug Harris, the Nationals’ farm director. “I know everyone wants to speculate about that. But he’s with a good group of teammates. He’s learning. Going through a league a second or third time — that’s a good challenge for a player.”

The one thing the team has confirmed is that Harper will not, under any circumstances, play in the big leagues this season.

Pressed about Harper’s offensive numbers — and whether they might suggest he isn’t being challenged by Sally League pitching — Harris said: “I think there’s more to it than just statistics in this instance. He’s making great strides in all phases of the game. Offence is just one component of the game, especially in the big leagues.”

Indeed, when you watch Harper play — as opposed to simply reading box scores or following his at-bats online — it becomes apparent he is still raw and prone to forehead-smacking mistakes on defence and on the basepaths.

Over the course of two games earlier this month, Harper made a series of outstanding catches in right field (he is also seeing extensive action in centre field), but also airmailed a throw to the plate that sailed into the netting behind the plate, about 15 feet above the ground.

He also tried to throw behind a runner making a turn at first base following a single, even though the first baseman was about 20 feet from the bag.

The basepaths provide another setting for adventure. Last week, after singling to left field, Harper saw the left fielder bobble the ball momentarily and took off for second, only to be thrown out by 20 feet. It wasn’t the first time this season that Harper has been guilty of playing “Little League” baseball on the basepaths — defined as running until someone tags you out.

“The hardest thing for Harper is realizing all these other players are better than what he’s played against before,” says Hagerstown Manager Brian Daubach.

“And some of the risks he could take on the bases before don’t work here, and arecertainly not going to work at higher levels. By no means do we want to take away his aggressiveness. It’s much easier to reel someone in than to try to get a passive player to be that aggressive. He’ll learn.”

And one day, the rest of us will learn just how good he can be.



Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Nex ... z1NBUZ6TuA

Why not a September call up?

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He's 18 years old and should be a senior in high school. There is no need to rush him. His time will come soon enough.

I hope he gets drilled in the face in his first big league at bat.

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Im not sure he was doing the kiss thing.

I think he may have been saying "PUSSY!"


Either way he's going to be a better hitter than Babe Ruth and you will all recognize.

Even if you were hit the day before, let your pitchers handle that. Also, get your ass out of the batters box. He is a great talent, but I would hope a manager would get to the young kid and tell him that is not how the game is played.

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2018
#ExtendLafleur
10 More Wins

Man I hate that saying.

The game is not played a certain way that was determined long ago by some righteous sportsmen.

Ty Cobb went in spikes high. Babe Ruth taunted pitchers. The game is played however it is played. Especially at the pro level. If you want to say that its not sportsmanlike fine, but there's a certain arrogance, especially in baseball, about playing the game "the right way"

He should also get rid of that ridiculous stache.

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So we agree, and are both saying the same thing just worded different, got it. I agree it takes arrogance, trust me I get to watch Ryan Braun everyday, but I just agree there is a right and a wrong way to do that.

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2018
#ExtendLafleur
10 More Wins

You post the right way Hawg Ass.

It only took 1666 post, I know there is more but Big Fan's pruning sheers have got a few, but somebody finally agrees with me.

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2018
#ExtendLafleur
10 More Wins

There is a certain arrogance to the game, but this just makes him look like a little bitch. If he wants to get even, go in hard on a double play ball or run over the catcher if/when the chance presents itself.

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Bryce Harper's truck.

http://deadspin.com/5814778/bryce-harpe ... ruck-to-be

He makes Ryan Braun look like not a doucebag which is an impressive thing to do

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Team Cutler.

Dan, you ignorant slut


Why is he a douchebag for having a custom truck?

I wouldn't say he's a douchebag, but I'm sure he doesn't make too many buds on the team when they are probably driving around in some old beat up piece of shit. Does the rest of the team have to ride that bus while he off-roads it to the next city?

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For some reason, a blacked out, lifted custom truck for a guy in single A ball screams dbag.

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Team Cutler.

Im sure he gives his crew a ride. He probably doesnt take it everywhere.



And how would you go about housing this mustache and these sideburns on the road?





Its a neccessity. Haters like you would be throwing lit firecrackers into his car a la Mets fans and Vince Coleman

Hey, semi-on-topic here but I'm in the NasHova super-duper-pooper-scooper 20 team 30-man roster 15x15 H2H league. We're going with 14 keepers heading into next season, so like, I'd better do some awesome drafting cuz as it stands it looks like roughly ~8-9 if my 14 players are going to be pitchers, which means that my offense is going to need to be supplanted by some sort of an armada of decent draft picks with potential upside heading into the near-future.

Why, if only there was a potential trade partner out there who recognized that I need a bunch of, say, 5th round draft picks along with some "for sure" pitching prospects like Josh Collmenter ("There's no doubt that he's legit" - Hova), Danny Duffy, and Jordan Lyles... I could really really make my team better with 3-5 more 5th (read: 19th) round draft picks. I very well might be willing to offer up a package of (Miguel Cabrera or Drew Stubbs) and Jhoulys Chacin for such a deal. Ah well, c'est la vie.

Anyways, here's a quick gander at what our boy Bryce is doing in AAA thus far...

Bryce Aron Harper - RF #34 Hagerstown Suns (Class A Washington): 67g 239ab 45r 77h 15h2b 1h3b 14hr 45rbi 38bb 56k 13sb 5cs 3e .322avg .421obp .569slg .990ops

Not bad, eh? Granted he's just in A ball as opposed to A+ or even AA, I reckon that he might get the nod up to AA by the second half and if he can continue to rake at a .990 OPS clip and a pace where if he were to play 150 games he'd be .322/31/100.... Not bad for a kid who can't even legally drink a beer yet, eh?

So basically, if you were a gallant team whose battle cry was "FEAR US IN 2013! THE EXPOS WILL RISE AGAIN!" and you had a pitching staff with, say, Jeremy Hellickson, Madison Bumgarner, Jhoulys Chacin, Stephen Strasburg (come back next year and be ~75-85% of what you were, dude!) and Brandon Beachy (this kid has taken the ball and ran with it whenever given a shot in the majors thus far), and then an offensive core of basically Miguel Cabrera, Danny Espinosa, Mike Moustakas, and Drew Stubbs.... what kind of a trade would you offer up for the future services of one Bryce Aron Harper? WHIR, so just leave the link to your thread and i'll get right on it!

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whoa, that mustache is a thing! i reckon it helps him not get carded when he's gotta go grab a fifth out in charleston, WV cuz he's got a few WV Power groupies who are about to become nightlong natinals fans, if you catch my drift

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So you are the famous ACX. I actually gave up Harper in a trade to get Adrian Gonzalez. I think it was a good trade off. Did you know that the kiss was in retalliation to a game before when he got drilled and the whole bench was mocking him?

What did you think of my move to jump ahead of you in the Lawrie sweepstakes? I am willing to pick him up for you for Stubbs if interested?

MLB.com's Bill Ladson reports that the Nationals have promoted Bryce Harper to Double-A Harrisburg. Harper earned the quick promotion by batting .318/.423/.554 with 14 home runs and 46 RBI in 72 games at Single-A Hagerstown.

They skipped him over high A. If he destroys AA pitching the Nats are going to have a tough decision on their hands come September.