Just one week ago, Harper was not projected to finish the season with a career-best strikeout rate. Now, the projections believe Harper will finish 2016 with a career-best strikeout rate. His rest-of-season projection, meaning the best estimation of his true-talent level, have already shaved his strikeout rate by half a percentage point. Yet, the forecasts have already changed somewhat to reflect his start. Even then, strikeout rate doesn’t stabilize until around 60 plate appearances, and Harper is only at 23, so we’re barely a third of the way there. Strikeout rate is the quickest offensive outcome to stabilize, meaning, it’s the area in which we can say with more certainty that a player has changed his true-talent ability earlier than any other. For a 23-year-old coming off a historic MVP season, that’s fun, because we spent the offseason wondering what he’d do next. He didn’t set any personal records - though if you want to get technical, you could extend back to last year and say he actually went 28 consecutive plate appearances without a whiff - but it also means the first we’ve seen of Harper this year is, in this one particular way, Harper at his best. ![]() There was a 22-plate-appearance run in 2013. Last year’s streak lasted 22 place appearances. Last year, he only went four games without a strikeout once, and never beyond that. Harper went 21 plate appearances into the season without being sat down on strikes, a streak which lasted four games and then some. Harper is all about authority, and it’s already been on display, which makes his strikeout-averse start to the season feel like it means more than Cabrera’s. Cabrera’s offensive game is built around putting the bat on the ball, without much care for authority. Entering the game, he was just one of two qualified hitters to have not yet K’d, and the other was Melky Cabrera, who never K’s. Except this time, it was noteworthy, because Harper hadn’t yet struck out this year. Which is a pretty normal thing for baseball players to do. This time, it was because I wanted to see if he’d strike out. I was one of those people keeping tabs on each Harper at-bat yesterday, except this time it wasn’t because I was enticed by the power. A Harper at-bat is a spectacle, not only because of the raw power, but because of the craft. He averaged more than four pitches per plate appearance last year, so you’re probably getting your money’s worth, and the allure of seeing a baseball hit 450 to center is ever present. Maybe more so than any other player in baseball, a Harper at-bat is the kind of thing that you set an alert for on MLB.TV so you can switch over to the Nationals’ feed when he comes up. ![]() Bryce Harper’s at-bats have become events.
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