A few months ago, Bryce Harper entered 2015 looking to silence the many doubters who thought he was, at worst, a huge disappointment or, at best, overrated.
If nothing the Washington Nationals star right fielder did throughout his phenomenal 2015 campaign could, him winning the National League Most Valuable Player should do the trick.
It was hardly a surprise when the news came down on Thursday. Though Arizona Diamondbacks first baseman Paul Goldschmidt and Cincinnati Reds first baseman Joey Votto were technically in the running for the NL MVP next to Harper, there was little question that the award was going to be his in a landslide.
It was just a question of how big of a landslide it was going to be, and it turned out to be unanimous.
At just 22 years and 353 days old on the final day of the regular season, Harper is the third-youngest player ever to win the NL MVP, behind only Johnny Bench in 1970 and Stan Musial in 1943. But of all the unanimous winners in the history of the MVP, he stands alone as the youngest.
And now for a point that is very, very, very hard to argue: Harper deserves every bit of the satisfaction he's now feeling.
Harper's 2015 season was, after all, nothing short of stupendous. All he did was hit .330 while co-leading the NL in home runs with 42 and leading all of baseball in on-base percentage (.460), slugging percentage (.649) and OPS (1.109). In the eyes of OPS+, a version of OPS adjusted for league average, Harper's 2015 season was the best offensive performance since Barry Bonds' 2004 campaign.
Throw in solid work on the basepaths and on defense, and Harper also topped all other position players in wins above replacement, whether you ask Baseball-Reference.com or FanGraphs.
In all, the only argument against Harper's victory is that the Nationals didn't make the playoffs. But that's not a prerequisite for winning the MVP, nor is it a legitimate criticism of the season Harper just had.
For that matter, there are no legitimate criticisms of the season Harper just had.
This, of course, is the first time in Harper's major league career that we've been able to say such a thing.
Two years after the Nationals drafted him No. 1 overall, Harper was good enough to win Rookie of the Year in 2012. Even still, he often looked like a rookie throughout the year. He was good again in 2013, but he was often hurt and was inconsistent down the stretch. In 2014, it was the same story.
By the end of that year, you could apparently look at Harper's .816 career OPS and feel underwhelmed. His fellow players sure did, anyway, voting him baseball's most overrated player in an ESPN the Magazine poll at the outset of 2015. At the time, you could wade into virtually any comments section and get the sense that fans felt the same way.
Harper's response? Well, he just sort of clicked.
It wasn't any one thing that led to Harper's monster season. One guy who's well aware of this is Nationals hitting coach Rick Schu, per Bill Ladson of MLB.com:
It was a combination of things as to why Harper had a great year. The No. 1 thing is that he stayed healthy. This past season, he was able to get comfortable with his hands. He was able to take the pitch that was given him. He was going line to line. I think his confidence really helped him with everything—pitch selection and taking his walk. He really slowed things down.
Harper staying healthy was indeed the No. 1 thing. After playing in only 218 games total in 2013 and 2014 because of injuries, he experienced only minor aches and pains on his way to playing in 153 games in 2015. If nothing else, this afforded him a chance to settle into a rhythm.
But Harper made tangible changes as well, most notably with his plate discipline. When looking at his Zone% and O-Swing% rates—those being how often he saw pitches in the strike zone and how often he swung at pitches outside the strike zone—Schu's point about Harper's learning to take pitches rings true:
In 2015, pitches in the zone continued to come infrequently for Harper. But because he stopped obliging pitchers by chasing their junk, he drew a ton of walks (19.0 BB%) and reaped the benefits of keeping his swings confined mainly to the strike zone.
Like, for example, a career-high 40.9 hard-hit rate and, by extension, slugging percentages over .800 to right field, center field and left field.
Such is the technical explanation for how Harper went from being a solid hitter to being the game's most dangerous hitter. The more practical explanation is that he became more than just an incredible bundle of raw talent. For the first time in his career, Harper played with his body and his head.
As much as anything, this would appear to be related to how Harper's head was finally in the right place in 2015.
Beyond his inconsistency, one of the problems Harper's critics had with him before his big breakout was that he acted too big for his britches. He often came off like a walking, talking ego. When he got into a dugout scrap with Jonathan Papelbon at the end of 2015, it looked like maybe nothing had changed.
Either that, or the Papelbon confrontation was an anomaly. Teammate Ian Desmond saw an improvement in Harper's attitude, per James Wagner of the Washington Post:
He learned from the negative stuff he was doing a couple years ago. Beyond what happened at the end of the year, no one talked about Bryce Harper not running the bases hard. He was playing the game the right way. At the end of the year, emotions are high, and that [fight with Papelbon] just surfaced from basically nothing. All year long, he played the game the right way and carried himself like a professional.
Looking back, it's almost as if Harper chose to stop and listen to every last critique that was being hurled his way, and that his 2015 season was his way of saying, "This is what you want me to be? OK, then."
And now that Harper's 2015 season is in the bag, it's amazing how different his career looks. Beyond placing him among today's elite players, Ace of MLB Stats couldn't help but notice that Harper's 2015 campaign elevated him to a pretty special place among the all-time elites:
Mind you, this is not to suggest that Harper is destined to have a career that will rival that of Hammerin' Hank. He has a lot of baseball ahead of him, and we're obligated to grant that anything could happen.
But for now, at least, things are definitely looking up. For anyone who dared to peg him as such, Harper is no longer a disappointment. Or overrated.
Nope. He's now an MVP and everything that anyone ever wanted him to be.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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