HARPER, STRASBURG FUEL NATS’ HOT START
Ex-mega prospects live up to hype, send team soaring
The expectations were ungodly, almost reckless.
One was called the greatest pitching prospect in baseball history.
The other was baseball’s chosen one and, at 16, was on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
If it wasn’t enough, Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper happened to be paired together with the Washington Nationals, a team widely predicted to win the World Series in each of the last three seasons.
Well, take a good look at them now.
Harper, the reigning National League MVP, is the best player in baseball.
Strasburg is the best pitcher in the NL not named Jake Arrieta or Clayton Kershaw.
And the Nationals, under new manager Dusty Baker, are sitting in first place with the finest start in franchise history, 17-7, after completing their first road sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals. It’s the best start by a team in the nation’s capital since 1932. Expectations? Bring them on, baby. “What the media puts out there is crazy, because it can shape reality,” Nationals left fielder Jayson Werth said. “It’s not an easy thing to have all of those expectations, everybody talking about you. But you have a guy like Dusty here, everyone is so relaxed, and we’re a reflection of our manager.
“You look at Harp and Stras. I think they’re doing all right.”
Let’s see, after winning the NL MVP Award last year, Harper —
despite a 0-for-11 performance vs. the Cardinals — entered Sunday tied for the major league lead in RBI with 24, second in slugging percentage and on-base percentage and tied for third in home runs with nine.
Strasburg is 4-0 with a 2.25 ERA and is averaging 10 strikeouts per nine innings.
“As much attention that Bryce had on him at such a young age, I think Strasburg had more pressure on him after the draft than Harper,” Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo said. “I mean, he was called the greatest pitching prospect ever. The greatest ever! That’s tough to live up to.
“You’re never going to live up to the crazy expectations that the media puts on you, but they’ve certainly both lived up to our expectations. We think Bryce is the best in the game. And since Stras has been healthy, he’s been as good as anybody in the game.”
Strasburg, 27, was supposed to have five Cy Young Awards by now and be on his way to the Hall of Fame. He has never won more than 15 games, but he entered the season with a career 54-37 record and 3.09 ERA. The only time the Nationals made the postseason, he was shut down because of an innings limit.
Yet he is 12-2 with a 1.91 ERA in his last 18 starts. Since coming off the disabled list Aug. 8, he has struck out 132 with 16 walks in 102 1⁄3 innings.
It might have taken awhile, but the man is living up to the hype, no matter what anyone wants to think about him.
“I’d be a liar if I said it didn’t bother me at some point,” Strasburg told USA TODAY Sports. “But now I kind of consider the source. I learned you can’t let that stuff bother you, because there are always going to be the naysayers, and people out there are consistently going to be saying you are something different.
“The game has changed. Everything is so analyzed. So I just don’t read it. I don’t watch it. I don’t listen to it. I just go out there and compete.”
Harper, who turns 24 in October, learned how to handle the expectations by watching Strasburg. They have different personalities: Harper almost embraces attention while Strasburg is so quiet you never know he’s in the room. Harper is actually more thrilled for Strasburg ’s success.
“The thing about Stras is that sometimes it takes a little bit of time to come into your own,” Harper said. “What he’s doing now is awesome to see. If you look at his numbers after the first half last year, they are absurd. They’re video game numbers.
“Everybody saw what he did at San Diego State (13-1, 1.32 ERA and 195 strikeouts in 109 innings in his final year). That’s what they expected him to do at the major league level. Well, that’s what he’s doing now. I love it.”
Harper, on the other hand, simply is continuing his domination of a year ago when he hit .330 with a league-leading 42 homers while driving in 99 runs. Actually, he has been performing better this season now that the Nationals took off the handcuffs, allowing him to run freely on the basepaths. He has five stolen bases compared with six all of last season.
“I couldn’t care less about the expectations, because my expectations are going to be higher than anyone else’s are going to be,” Harper said. “I just don’t look at it that way. I’ve got a family that loves me. I’ve got an organization that loves me.
“That’s all I need. It don’t matter what anybody else thinks.” That simple. That confident. “Bryce was so brash that he believed that he was not only going to live up to these expectations but exceed them,” Baker said. “I remember one day he did something spectacular on the field, and I told him, ‘That was some Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds stuff there.’ He said, ‘No, that was Bryce Harper stuff.’
“And he said it so matter-offactly. He’s not cocky; he’s just confident. He’s completely different from what I expected from the other side of the field.”
Indeed, you sit down with Harper, and he’s one of the most engaging players in baseball. He knows more about the game’s history than most coaching staffs. You talk about the Nationals’ first difficult part of the schedule, a rigorous 10-game trip vs. the Cardinals, Kansas City Royals and Chicago Cubs — three playoff contenders, including the 2015 World Series champions — and he talks about the pleasure of it.
Where else on a single road trip, Harper says, can you stop and admire the Stan Musial statue outside Busch Stadium in St. Louis, see your idol and Hall of Famer, George Brett, in Kansas City and admire some of the best young talent in the game in Chicago, hoping to get the details from Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant about their lavish new clubhouse digs?
“I love playing against those great franchises,” Harper said. “It’s like coming here and playing at Busch Stadium. One of their guys had an all-natural bat, and all I could think of was Mark McGwire with his all-natural bat, all pine-tarred up, and then hitting a homer. You think about Stan Musial, one of the greatest hitters of all time, Lou Brock, Joe Torre. It’s just a blast coming in here and playing in a place like this.
“I’ve never had so much fun in my life this year. It starts all of the way at the top with Dusty Baker, the way he goes about it, the mentality he brings, having fun and worrying about only things you can control. Playing for Dusty is an absolute blast.”
This a team that ended last season with closer Jonathan Papelbon choking Harper on the bench, with Papelbon being suspended and manager Matt Williams being fired. These days, they’re hanging out in the clubhouse together talking baseball long after games and going out to dinner on the road. They have a team field trip scheduled for Tuesday to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City.
“The thing that happened last year got so blown out of proportion,” Werth said. “It was over right after it happened. Even brothers fight. You’re going to have guys on top of one another for eight months, there’s bound to be fights. There are fights all of the time; just nobody hears about it.
“So we’ve always had a good group in here, but Dusty adds another level to what we already had. There’s that age-old saying: The players are a reflection of the manager.
“Well, that’s what’s happening here.”
And what we’re seeing are the new-look, fun-loving Nats, living up to all that hype of past years. You get the feeling the Nats could be in for a summer to remember.
“Hopefully the finish, too,” Werth said.
“I couldn’t care less about the expectations, because my expectations are going to be higher than anyone else’s. Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper