For as angry as he initially was after being drilled by a 97 mph fastball Saturday, Bryce Harper made sure to reach out to San Diego Padres’ lefty Blake Snell after the game and let him know that there wasn’t bad blood between the two of them.
Despite suffering a left thumb fracture that will likely end Harper’s quest to win back-to-back National League MVPs, he says he knows Snell didn’t intend to hit him.
“I’ve been playing against Blake since we were 10 or 11 years old. I know there was no ill will behind that at all. It’s part of the game. The inside pitch is part of the game. It just got away from him,” Harper said of what he told Snell via text message, per Alex Coffey of The Philadelphia Inquirer.
“It’s a bummer that it happened, but (Snell) is a great player and a great human being as well. I wish him the best, I told him that as well. Keep throwing the inside fastball because it sets up the slider really good.”
Last April, Harper was hit in the face by St. Louis Cardinals’ reliever Génesis Cabrera, narrowly missing being hit in the eye. At that time, Harper texted Cabrera to tell him that he didn’t believe he was hit intentionally, and wanted to make sure that the young pitcher didn’t let it affect him mentally.
While Harper missed some time in early May of 2021 after being hit and posted just a .634 OPS in the month, it didn’t prevent him from winning the NL MVP for the second time in his career. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski wasn’t able to give a firm timetable on how long Harper will be out with this thumb fracture — as noted by Matt Gelb of The Athletic — but it figures to be significantly longer than the absence he had a year ago.
Harper actually told Coffey that he thinks he would have been better off being hit in the face, saying that “I can take 98 to the face but I can’t take 97 to the thumb.”
Of course, just because Harper was hit in the face a year ago and walked away without a serious injury doesn’t mean that would be the case again. Getting hit with a ball fired near triple digits could give you a concussion, it could blind you, there’s a whole lot of potentially awful consequences. In the long run, whether Harper’s thumb needs surgery or not, it will heal and he’ll be OK.
But the fact that Harper would even wonder if he would have been better off getting hit in the face gives you an idea of how crushing an injury this is, both for him and the Phillies.
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