Harper will be sending long balls out of Citi Field next Monday, but should he be on the All-Star team?
By Dave Holcomb
Major League Baseball fans are some of the loyalist, most knowledgeable fans around, but they may have gotten this one wrong.
Despite the fact Washington Nationals Outfielder Bryce Harper only returned from injury last week, and missed the entire month of June, fans voted Harper to start in the Mid-Summer Classic next week.
Harper, however, is very lucky he received enough votes from the fans because his numbers don’t indicate he deserves to be starting. Or even on the team at all.
In the three major categories I focus on for All-Star voting, AVG, Home Runs and RBI, Harper ranks 12th, tied for 7th and tied for 19th. And that’s among only outfielders in the National League.
If one takes a look at a couple other statistics (I glance at in case the other three categories aren’t enough to narrow it down), runs and stolen bases, Harper ranks 22nd and 29th among NL outfielders.
The only stats Harper is dominating are On-base Percentage and Slugging Percentage. The Nationals outfielder is in the top five in both statistics.
Yes, one could argue that because Harper missed over 30 games due to injury, his stats are slightly behind everyone else’s. But then why isn’t Yasiel Puig on the team?
Puig has 132 At-Bats while Harper has 178, and Puig has more hits (54 versus 50). Harper has a slight edge in runs, homer runs and RBI, but Puig leads in AVG, OBP, and SLUG by at least 50 points in each category and over 100 points in two of them.
And there’s lots of other National League Outfielders who also deserve to be on the team, arguable over Harper.
Jay Bruce and Shin-Soo Choo from Cincinnati are both deserving. Bruce has posted a .271, 18 and 60 line so far while Choo is the catalyst for the Reds offense scoring 57 runs and hitting 12 bombs. Choo has helped the Reds stay more than afloat in baseball’s toughest division.
What about Ryan Braun? The Brewers’ outfielder has a .304, 9 and 36 stat line, all better than Harper, and in only 36 more At-Bats than Harper.
Even Starling Marte from the Pirates seems more deserving. At .288, 9 and 27, he’s right on par with Harper, but the difference is Marte leads the National League with 27 steals, and is third with 58 runs scored.
But there’s one reason why Bryce Harper made it to the All-Star game ahead of all those players: the fan vote. Fittingly, he will be in the Home Run Derby too.
All Stats are of July 9th at 6:18pm
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