It’s little secret that Bryce Harper hasn’t lived up to his contract this season. When you’re making $330 million over 13 years, it turns out that’s pretty hard to do.
Harper hasn’t played badly — an .832 OPS with 1.5 WAR at this point in the year is nothing to sneeze at. He just hasn’t played like Bryce Harper. His OPS would be his worst since 2016, and his home run production is down despite playing his home games in a bandbox.
He has 20 home runs over 501 plate appearances, which, per analysis done by The Big Lead, is a 43% increase in the number of plate appearances it took him to reach the same number last year.
This problem is exacerbated by the length of Harper’s contract, which virtually guarantees that any value the Phillies get out of him will be in its first few seasons.
The way he turns it around, especially with every game holding outsize importance to the NL wild-card race, is to do what everyone else in baseball is doing: Hit more home runs.
His contract hasn’t started to get criticized widely, but if things continue this way, it will. He’ll be expected to perform down the stretch and in the playoffs, which means hitting the ball out of the park.
If he can’t, he may not hear the end of it for the next 12 years.


