How overrated is Bryce Harper?

[ten ocho recon scout]

13 hours ago, Lou said:

invite Kuzma and Pujols to INO and 98% of the people there wouldn't know who Kuzma is. 

i'm a lifelong Lakers fan and wouldn't know who he is. 

Hes the good looking one. Well, so would anyone be next to lonzo.

[ten ocho recon scout]

Ive said several times id be ecstatic to sign Harper. Harper / Trout would be insane.

That said, yes, he is overrated.

Hes basically baseballs version of an NBA star. His rep goes back to before he was drafted. I cant think of anyone even close. No one knew who trout, kershaw, stanton, altuve etc etc were in high school (except scouts). But harper was on SIs cover already.

Then the hype continues in the minors. Gets called up, does pretty well...but overshadowed (big time) by trout.

He finally has a monster season, and its "hes arrived!" Then hes back to "someday hes gonna put it all together!"

If you took away the myth surrounding him since he was 16, and he was just another prospect in the minors, everyone would see him totally different.

Talent off the charts. Gamer. Still super young. But youth aside, hes also a 7 year MLB vet...have the 7 years been what we expected? No. Will the next 7 be? Maybe... but I think in the current age, we can throw the argument that guys oeak at 28-30 out the window. That was back in the day when most guys came up at 23/24 or so. The stats were skewed by the masses, not the stars.

I just cant see how he would suddenly turn a corner simply by aging. Hes seen the league for almost 2 presidential terms already...whats left to learn?

But i still think hes as solid as anyone to give you .270, 40 home runs the next 4 years. Not sure if thats worth $300 mill, but...

... ITS NOT MY MONEY! (Say it in your head like a catch phrase, like "ill buy that for a dollar!")

[Stradling]

9 hours ago, Angelsjunky said:

Its been years since I've been at the receiving end of a good old-fashioned Stradling brow-beating, so why not?

This isn’t a brow-beating, it is just using common sense.  Do you remember graduating high school?  Remember how pumped you were to go back to high school for two more years after graduating?  I certainly don’t.  So he leaves the Dominican and says, lets go back to school, not for one year, but for two years in Kansas City, in hopes of getting drafted.  So he does this all so he can not be drafted out of high school.  So he goes to community college, and then is he a high draft choice, nope.  

I don’t hate Albert, I don’t love Albert, I just use common sense and maybe some projection.  I have never met anyone who would say, “lets go back to high school for a couple of years”.  To me, and you are welcome to disagree, but to me it doesn’t pass the smell test.  

[Stradling]

5 hours ago, ten ocho recon scout said:

Not quite that simple. The dodgers have also outspent the world going back to 2013. And they have the money to back it up. 

In 2015, their payroll was about 300 million. Let that sink in. They paid about 43 million on top of that for luxury tax purposes.

But they can afford it. Almost no one else can.

Not to mention, they outspent in the international market. 

Im not knocking the dodgers. Im very envious. But then again i can watch the angels on TV.

Yep, the Dodgers bring in $200 more in revenue than the Angels.  So they can spend much more money than just about any team.  Not to mention the Guggenheim group is beyond rich.  The Dodgers also haven’t signed many guys that require draft pick compensation.  They have refused to give up their great prospects to fill holes.  

[Angelsjunky]

2 hours ago, Stradling said:

This isn’t a brow-beating, it is just using common sense.  Do you remember graduating high school?  Remember how pumped you were to go back to high school for two more years after graduating?  I certainly don’t.  So he leaves the Dominican and says, lets go back to school, not for one year, but for two years in Kansas City, in hopes of getting drafted.  So he does this all so he can not be drafted out of high school.  So he goes to community college, and then is he a high draft choice, nope.  

I don’t hate Albert, I don’t love Albert, I just use common sense and maybe some projection.  I have never met anyone who would say, “lets go back to high school for a couple of years”.  To me, and you are welcome to disagree, but to me it doesn’t pass the smell test.  

It isn't a smoking gun - I'm not saying that, nor is the author of the article afaict. But when you combine it with several other factors, well...there sure is an odor of gunpowder in the air.

[Lou]

1 hour ago, Angelsjunky said:

It isn't a smoking gun - I'm not saying that, nor is the author of the article afaict. But when you combine it with several other factors, well...there sure is an odor of gunpowder in the air.

what other factors?

 

 

[ten ocho recon scout]

4 hours ago, Stradling said:

  I have never met anyone who would say, “lets go back to high school for a couple of years”.  

 

[yk9001]

1 hour ago, ten ocho recon scout said:

 

[makepeac]

Great article in the Washington Post by respected baseball writer Thomas Boswell on the ‘Nats new emphasis on fundamentals and team play with this telling passage on the perceived loss of Harper:

“Though few mention it, subtracting Harper, while it will cost 34 homers, a .899 career OPS and some amazing hair flips, would help any team improve its attention to fundamentals. When the most famous player on the team can’t go 10 days without failing to run out a groundball or overthrowing a cutoff man by 15 feet or throwing to the wrong base or being caught unprepared in the outfield or on the bases, it’s hard to demand total alertness from the other 24.

“Write it,” one prominent Nats vet said.

Losing Harper carries a high cost. But if the Nats don’t play a crisper, less mistake-riddled brand of baseball without him, it’s an opportunity wasted. Rizzo has done many things right, but in Bryce’s early years, when he had “players’ managers” who rarely said a discouraging word and owned no whip, Rizzo should have been the bad cop to tell him the truth about the gaps in his game. But the GM had such a high opinion of Harper personally — always referred to as “such a great kid” — that he couldn’t make the leap to “but also an overindulged player.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/how-can-the-nats-be-better-without-bryce-harper-its-fundamental-really/2019/02/15/cfe9eb34-3164-11e9-813a-0ab2f17e305b_story.html