Scott Boras makes a number of good points about Bryce Harper and his current slump:

While other offensive stats have surfaced and gained popularity in recent years, batting average remains the basic measuring stick. It is the first number looked at, and Harper’s ugly number has drawn attention. But Boras looks at Harper’s hard-hit rate (41.3 percent entering Wednesday, which would be a career best). He looks at his walk rate (18.5 percent, which would be his second highest). And he looks at his batting average on balls in play, BABIP (.225, which would be the lowest of his career by a huge margin). He concludes that Harper, whose batting average has plummeted 53 points since May 3, is not performing as poorly as his batting average indicates.

“I’ve dealt with greatness in this game for a long time, and the great thing about trials in the game, that the game brings to great players, is that you have to look at what the game and the opponents are trying to do and what the game’s trying to do to prohibit greatness,” Boras said. “Because he gets off to a great start, what do they do? Well, they’re going to starve him from the strike zone. And remember they’re not doing this to a [Mike] Trout or a [Manny] Machado. Why is that? They’re great players. Why are they not doing it them, yet they’re doing it to Bryce? And the answer to that, I think, is largely that [the] power component carries a great fear.”

I don’t buy the last bit about Machado and Trout. Teams can score more easily off the Angels and Orioles than they can against the Nationals, making runs those two players produce easier to overcome.

What I don’t quite understand in all this is why Harper hasn’t adjusted. There was a game his rookie year in which Livan Hernandez came on in relief against Washington. He faced Harper in the sixth inning and struck him out on what I remember as an Ephesus pitch, or just a really slow curve ball. Harper swung and missed at the pitch, and when he returned to the dugout he was getting razzed by the veterans on the team. Harper comes up in the eighth inning, and Hernandez throws the same pitch. This time, Harper crushes it for a home run. That’s what impressed me about Harper at age 19, that he could adjust so quickly to the game.

Today, everything he does seems to directed toward pulling the ball hard. At the moment, it’s not working for him. I have seen him try to bunt, but he’s not a good bunter. I don’t see why he doesn’t try directing the ball the other way.

It’s Ty Cobb versus Babe Ruth. When Cobb hit, he would look for holes in the defense, then try to direct balls that way. Cobb hit for plenty of power for his era, legging out over 1000 doubles + triples. If Harper were just to meet the ball to send it into leftfield, plenty would roll own the line for doubles, since there would be no third baseman to stop them. Instead, Harper keeps trying to be Babe Ruth, hitting everything hard, but his rocket grounders keep finding gloves.

It’s my understanding that this kind of shift (pun intended) in hitting philosophy is difficult. Harper always struck me as more adaptable than the average player, and he is certainly more physically talented than most. If anyone could pull off switching between Cobb and Ruth, I would think Harper would be the person.