With teammates hobbled, Harper must carry the payload
PHILADELPHIA » Joe Girardi spent four years with the Yankees as a player, another 10 as a manager, and he has the rings on his fingers and the ringing in his ears as souvenirs.
He played with or managed some of the greatest ever to wear a striped baseball ensemble, including plenty who were horribly overcompensated. But he knew then, as he must know now, that it was all part of one simple deal: Take the money and perform well in months ending in “b-e-r.” That’s where Reggie-ReggieReggie became Mr. October, where Derek Jeter compiled a video library of late-season highlights, where greatness was financed, expected and quite often achieved.
There were plenty of reasons why Girardi was hired after last season to manage the Phillies. High on the list, though, was his awareness of how the real work was to be done after Labor Day. So that would have been him Wednesday, being pressed on an issue that has yet to become a crisis but is trending toward something that would have had the New York papers racing to print the most inflammatory headlines.
It’s Bryce Harper.
It’s the .192 September batting average he would lug into a 5-4 loss to the New York Mets.
It’s the $330,000,000 investment.
It’s the deal within the deal.
So isn’t this the moment the Phillies had in mind when they used that private jet, the one with the squiggly, red “P” on the tai,l to recruit Harper? In a pennant race? A little short on bodies? In need of a jolt?
Isn’t this the moment when the stars are supposed to be the stars, the Yankee Stadium way?
“Sometimes they do,” Girardi said. “And there are times when players are not playing their best at the most important times. It happens.
It’s the way baseball is.”
Of course it is. And for all the legend oozing from Yankee Stadium, Reggie Jackson struck out once or twice. Though he was the MVP of the 1980 World Series, Mike Schmidt was a career .255 hitter in September and October regular-season games. And there wouldn’t have been a 1980 World Series for the Phillies had Dallas Green not benched slumping future Wall of Famers Greg Luzinski, Bob Boone and Garry Maddox late in the pennant race.
So there is a danger in tattooing a player as incapable of pennant-race production just because he had a rough first two weeks of September in the most convoluted season in the history of the game. But because of that situation, because the season was so butchered from the start, it has its own dynamic.
And there the Phillies were Wednesday, lingering at 2423 with a couple of weeks to play and a deep postseason pool into which they had a chance to make a splash.
The Phillies signed Harper for 13 years. But it was in that time that there might be a 13-game requirement to make the investment appear worthwhile. That moment has come for Harper. The Phillies are without J.T. Realmuto, Rhys Hoskins and Jay Bruce, essentially his power cover. They are deep into the race in spite of unreasonable injuries and schedule demands.
They needed a boost, then, from their priciest, free-agent acquisitions, much in the Yankees style. They would receive one Wednesday from $118,000,000 pitcher Zack Wheeler, last known to be catching his pitching-hand middle finger on his zipper, who responded by working nicely into the eighth against his former team.
But as for Harper, he would go 0-for-5 as the designated hitter, with three strikeouts, including one swinging after being ahead in the count, 3-1, as the potential tying run in the ninth. In one at-bat, he took two high changeups from Jacob deGrom, then swung wildly at a pitch in the dirt. With a couple of exceptions, that’s how he’s looked since raising his average to .303 with an Aug. 29 double against Atlanta. Since then, he has had one home run, a solo version accounting for his only RBI.
No two sports are identical. But some motivational methods can be translated from one sports language to another. Flyers coach Alain Vigneault, for one, is never hesitant to publicly gripe that he needs more from his better players. Yet for all his Yankee Stadium DNA, Girardi has a different style.
“There were times when we heard, ‘This guy hasn’t hit well in the playoffs,’” Girardi said. “Then the next year, he is huge in the playoffs. So he’s just going through those cycles that hitters go through.”
Harper has been a career .275 hitter in September and October with 41 home runs in 205 games. And for the Phillies, he has been a spectacular defender, a brilliant and aggressive baserunner, a clubhouse leader, a consistent on-base threat, a relentless competitor and, for his season-plus, an overall spectacular performer.
But the Phillies, injured in many places and not having won a playoff spot since 2011, could use a couple of strong late-summer, earlyfall weeks from a player they are paying a little extra to provide a little extra.
It’s kind of why those 14 years Joe Girardi spent in New York were so glowing.
“Our hope is that he gets hot like he is capable of doing,” Girardi said before the game. “We have 13 games left and we know he is capable of doing it. So time will tell.”
And as anyone with 14 years of Yankee Stadium passport stamps would know, it will tell for years and years afterward.