Bryce Harper

June 28: Harper indeed will undergo surgery, tweets Jim Salisbury of NBC Sports Philadelphia. The Phillies are optimistic that he’ll be able to return this season and are expecting an approximate recovery time of six weeks, per the report.

June 27: Phillies star Bryce Harper fractured his left thumb on a hit-by-pitch Saturday night, a development that necessitated an immediate injured list stint. He’s undergone further testing over the past two days to determine the next steps in his treatment, and it seems as if the reigning NL MVP is likely to go under the knife.

Scott Lauber of the Philadelphia Inquirer reports that Harper “is expected to need surgery” to repair the fracture. That procedure wouldn’t necessarily end his season, but Lauber indicates it’d cost him at least two months. Even in the (seemingly unlikely) scenario where Harper avoids surgery, he’s looking at a four-to-six week absence at minimum, per the Inquirer.

On the one hand, it’s encouraging to hear that Harper anticipates making a return this season even if he does need to undergo a procedure. Yet the development that he’s likely headed for surgery that’ll cost him eight-plus weeks is obviously a brutal blow for a Philadelphia club that hasn’t staked a strong claim to a playoff spot to this point. The Phils enter play Monday owning a 39-35 record, placing them a game and a half back of the Cardinals for the final National League Wild Card spot (with the Giants also sitting a game above them).

That solid but not excellent showing has been in spite of another stellar year from Harper. He’s hitting .318/.385/.599 with 15 home runs through 275 plate appearances, offense that checks in 66 percentage points above the league average by measure of wRC+. That’s not far off the 170 mark from last season that resulted in his second career MVP. Playing through a UCL tear in his throwing elbow has relegated Harper to designated hitter for much of the season, but he’s remained one of the sport’s most productive offensive players.

Offseason signees Nick Castellanos and Kyle Schwarber will split time between one corner outfield spot and DH while Harper’s out of action. The Phils recalled Mickey Moniak over the weekend to join Odúbel Herrera and Matt Vierling as other options for interim skipper Rob Thomson. Philadelphia grabbed Oscar Mercado off waivers from the Guardians this afternoon to add a center field-capable depth player to the mix. Mercado has followed up a solid 2019 rookie showing with a trio of subpar seasons at the plate that eventually squeezed him off Cleveland’s roster.

Claiming Mercado certainly won’t preclude the Phils from further addressing the outfield over the next five-plus weeks. Center field was likely to be a target area even before Harper’s injury, and probably losing the star slugger through the end of August only figures to increase the club’s urgency for other upgrades. Andrew Benintendi, Anthony Santander, Michael A. Taylor, David Peralta, Tommy Pham and, if the Mariners don’t right the ship in the coming weeks, Mitch Haniger, are among the host of outfielders who could be available at the deadline.

June 26: As expected, the team announced that Moniak has been recalled with Harper officially placed on the 10-day injured list.

June 25: Bryce Harper’s season may be in jeopardy, after the reigning NL MVP suffered a fractured thumb in Saturday’s game against the Padres.  Facing Blake Snell in the fourth inning, Harper had to duck to avoid a 97mph fastball that sailed up and in, but the pitch still hit Harper in his left hand, leaving the Phillies slugger in visible pain.

Harper immediately left the game, and the Phillies announced shortly afterwards that initial tests revealed the fracture.  More details will be known after further tests take place, and president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski told reporters (including The Athletic’s Matt Gelb) that it is too soon to tell if Harper will need surgery.  As such, the door isn’t closed on a potential Harper return, as Dombrowski is “hopeful he’ll be back at some point.”

If surgery is required, Harper is in danger of missing the remainder of the 2022 campaign.  While every specific injury is different, for comparion’s sake, Jean Segura was given a recovery timeline of 10-12 weeks after the Philadelphia second baseman suffered his own fractured finger in late May and had to undergo surgery.

Losing Segura was a brutal enough outcome for the Phils, yet the team rebounded to post its best month of the season.  The Phillies had a 22-29 record under former manager Joe Girardi, but after Girardi was fired and Rob Thomson was elevated from bench coach to interim manager, Philadelphia promptly went on a 15-6 run over Thomson’s first 21 games as skipper.

That run got the Phillies back up over the .500 mark (37-35) heading into tonight’s action, and three games out of an NL wild card berth.  However, it is hard to imagine Philadelphia staying in the race without Harper’s contributions to an overall underwhelming lineup.  With Harper and Segura out, Kyle Schwarber and Rhys Hoskins are the only regulars hitting well above average.

Harper has already been playing through pain, as a small UCL tear has limited him to DH duty for over two months.  In the big picture, Harper monopolizing the DH spot hasn’t helped Philadelphia, as Schwarber and Nick Castellanos have been forced into everyday corner-outfield roles, much to the detriment of the Phillies’ defense.  (And possibly Castellanos’ offense, as he has had an underwhelming year at the plate.)  On the plus side, Harper’s own bat has still been on fire, as he carried 15 home runs and a .320/.385/.602 slash line into tonight’s game against the Padres.

Harper’s UCL tear further complicates matters.  If the Phils fall behind in the postseason race, Harper might decide to stop delaying the inevitable and get elbow surgery, thus shutting him down for 2022 but likely ensuring that he’d miss little or none of the 2023 season.

Injuries have long been a subplot of Harper’s career, yet he has been relatively durable in recent years, playing in 515 of a possible 546 games from 2018-21.  Through it all, Harper has continued to produce at a Cooperstown-ian level, including his MVP campaign last year.  After previously winning NL MVP honors with the Nationals in 2015, Harper became the fifth player in baseball history to win an MVP on multiple teams, as he hit .309/.429/.615 with 35 home runs and a league-best 42 doubles with the Phillies last season.

Unfortunately, that production could only help the Phils to an 82-80 record — enough to snap a streak of nine consecutive non-winning seasons, but not enough to get the club back into the playoffs.  Harper’s 13-year, $330MM contract makes him an easy target for criticism, yet the Phillies’ lack of on-field success is hardly Harper’s fault, given his huge numbers over three-plus years in Philadelphia.

In the near term, Harper’s absence frees up the DH spot for a Schwarber/Castellanos timeshare, which can create an opportunity for a big defensive upgrade.  Dombrowski said that Mickey Moniak is being called up to take Harper’s spot on the active roster, though Moniak is hardly an ideal everyday solution.  For now, the Phillies’ plan would seem to consist of having one of Castellanos or Schwarber at DH in a regular lineup, the other in a corner outfield spot, and a rotation of Moniak, Odubel Herrera, and Matt Vierling covering the other two outfield positions.  Down on the farm, Scott Kingery, Justin Williams, Jorge Bonifacio, and Dustin Peterson are all options, though none are on the 40-man roster.

A trade would be one way for the Phillies to address the situation, as even if Harper is gone for the season, the Phils aren’t immediately going to wave the white flag on their chances of finally ending their playoff drought.  That said, Dombrowski could wait on Harper’s status before determining the extent of a future move — if Harper could avoid surgery, that could increase the chances of the Phillies acquiring a more proven everyday outfielder, rather than perhaps a complementary piece.

For Phillies fans looking for a silver lining, the obvious comp is the 2021 Braves, who were only 44-44 when Ronald Acuna Jr. tore his ACL last July 10.  While Atlanta seemed doomed, the Braves instead revamped their outfield mix by trading for Eddie Rosario, Joc Pederson, Adam Duvall, and Jorge Soler prior to the trade deadline, and ended up rolling all the way to a World Series championship.

While it may be far-fetched to think that such a scenario could happen for another NL East team in a second consecutive season, Dombrowski is no stranger to aggressive roster shuffling.  The way the Phillies have rebounded in June has breathed new life into the team’s season, and it would take an immediate and sudden downturn for Philadelphia to shift into seller mode before the deadline.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

An elbow issue that’s relegated Bryce Harper to DH duties since mid-April has been diagnosed as a ’small tear’ in his UCL, reports Alex Coffey of the Philadelphia Enquirer. While the reigning NL MVP remains able to swing the bat, he’ll undergo a platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection on Sunday that will keep him out of the Phillies lineup on Sunday, and possibly into early next week.

The team had previously called the issue a mild elbow sprain, but a visit to Dr. Neal ElAttrache confirmed a test from last week that appeared to show a small tear in his ulnar collateral ligament — the same ligament replaced in Tommy John surgeries. Whether or not such a surgery is in Harper’s future remains to be seen, but it appears that the Phils’ present intention is to keep Harper’s bat in the lineup in whatever way possible.

Signed by the Phillies to a 13-year, $330MM deal ahead of the 2019 season, Harper has mostly lived up to his billing, compiling a .280/.396/.553 triple-slash — good for a 145 wRC+ — in the first three-plus seasons of the deal. 2021 marked his best season in Philadelphia, as he led the majors in both slugging percentage and OPS with a .309/.429/.615 batting line (a 170 wRC+, also best in the bigs) en route to his second NL MVP.

Whatever the prognosis, Joe Girardi’s squad can ill afford to have Harper out of the lineup for long. It’s still early, of course, but the Phillies are already seven games off the pace in the NL East. They may have suffered a bit of bad luck already early in the year: despite a run differential of plus-ten, for instance, the Phillies are three games under .500 entering play on Thursday, and neither the offense (with a collective wRC+ of 106) nor the pitching staff (which has an xFIP of .365, ninth in the bigs) has clearly underperformed. Still, with both the red-hot Mets and the defending World Series champion Braves (not to mention the pitching-rich Marlins) in the same division, Girardi will need to right the ship sooner than later if his team wants to keep alive more than faint hopes for a division title.

After signing both Nick Castellanos (to a five-year, $100MM deal) and Kyle Schwarber (four years, $79MM) in the offseason, the Phils were already playing with defensive fire, but the expectation had been that one of the two would serve as the DH the vast majority of the time. While both have provided some punch at the plate (Castellanos much more so, with a 147 wRC+ to Schwarber’s 99), they’re also both liabilities on defense — an effect that’s amplified when they share an outfield. Harper has rated out as roughly average in right (his 9.9 career UZR suggests he’s saved roughly ten runs over his eleven-year career, though defensive advanced stats are far more controversial than offensive), but his replacement with either Castellanos or Schwarber represents a substantial downgrade.