August 22, 2016

Victory Lap?

Every once in a while Baseball Musings gets something right. On August 4th, this post speculated that Bryce Harper was hurt.

My intuition is that Harper is hurt. He was hit by a pitch on the knee on May 30th. He didn’t play again until June 3rd. I suspect the knee was not quite ready when he came back, and that injury led to him changing his mechanics.

So Harper plays with a not quite healed knee, and when he swings it hurts. The natural thing to do is avoid the pain, so Harper changes his swing just a bit to put less pressure on the knee. That would be enough to make his contact weaker.

Prince Fielder was in a slump all year, and he needed neck surgery. Andrew McCutchen spent all year in a slump, and the Pirates are giving him a few days off. If I were the Nationals, I’d put Harper on the DL for two weeks, work on rehabilitating the knee, and let him come back healthier for the stretch run.

On August 7th, we find out he was or became injured:

I saw that painful foul, and F.P. Santangelo commented at the time that you never know when someone is playing through a injury. In other words, it looked like something that had been bothering Harper for a while rearing it’s ugly head.

Maybe it was one swing that caused the neck pain. Maybe it had been there awhile and Harper didn’t realize it was hurting his performance, as it was at a low level. Harper didn’t go on the disabled list, but he did not play in a game for seven days and received treatment. The result? In eight games since his return, he’s batting .400/.526/.700, 12 for 30 with eight walks and five extra base hits. He also struck out just five times.

It is perfectly possible that nothing changed and Harper just got lucky for eight games. He played against Atlanta and in Colorado, and that might help anyone out of a slump. The scenario above at least looks plausible. Washington’s schedule doesn’t look that tough for the rest of the season, so we may need to wait for the playoffs to see if the slump is really over.

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