Phillies: How Bryce Harper has turned into a contact hitting machine

We’re over a quarter of the way through the 2021 MLB season, and Bryce Harper is currently slashing .311/.434/.555. A player who has routinely been mocked for his low batting average and high strikeout rate throughout his baseball playing career, this has largely been an unexpected development from the Phillies franchise outfielder.

Harper has turned into a contact hitting machine. He has the second highest xwOBA in all of baseball, his strikeout numbers are down compared to 2018 and 2019, and his chase rate is actually above average compared to the rest of the MLB.

A player who had built a reputation for himself of being “boom or bust” at the plate (as in home run or strikeout), has now developed into one of the best contact hitters in the sport. He ranks 16th across all qualified hitters in terms of batting average; fifth in the National League.

So how has he done it?

Just how exactly has Harper gone from a .257 average over his past three seasons to now being a consistent .300 hitter 42 games into the 2021 season?

First and foremost, natural ups-and-downs that come with baseball could be attributed to Harper’s sudden burst of high-average hitting. He was a .300+ hitter in 2015 and 2017, so it’s not like hitting for a high average is a completely foreign concept for Harper, it’s just not something he’s done very recently.

With that said, there is one aspect of Harper’s game that’s really stood out to me as of late. Something that he started to implement in 2020, and has seemingly mastered here in 2021.

His approach at the plate with two strikes:

If you’ve watched a good number of Phillies games this season, you’ve probably heard the broadcast team talk about how Harper adjusts his batting stance when there’s two strikes on him. He widens his stance, eliminates the big leg kick, shortens up the swing, and looks to put the ball in play. He did it last night after falling down in the count 0-2, and it resulted in a sharp two-RBI single out to right field.

Looking at Harper’s batting splits this season, the numbers speak for themselves. He’s currently batting .227 during two strike counts, which may seem low until you realize his career batting average with two strikes is just .188.

A .39 point increase is rather significant.

Bryce Harper has turned into an elite contact hitter for the Phillies.

While Harper’s newfound style of two-strike hitting hasn’t resulted in positive results for the Phillies from a win-loss perspective quite yet, it’s resulted in Harper being seen towards the top of almost every offensive metric in baseball. His current .311 average ranks fifth in the NL (as previously stated), his OBP ranks second, his SLG ranks seventh, and his OPS fifth.

Harper is by all accounts and measures one of the best offensive players in the NL at the moment, and should receive some serious MVP consideration by year’s end if he continues along this current track, and if the Phillies can somehow win their division.

We all want Harper to launch 50+ home runs every year, but his commitment to improving his approach at the plate when down in counts represents a serious sense of maturity and work ethic. It’s something his fellow teammates (Rhys Hoskins), should start looking to implement.