Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Bryce Harper said after Sunday’s loss to the Cleveland Guardians that the “superstars got to show up.” They didn’t against the New York Yankees, and the Phillies were subsequently swept.
Zack Wheeler and Cristopher Sánchez, both of whom were All-Stars this season, combined to give up 14 runs in their starts. Trea Turner went 1-for-10 between the first two games of the series, and after saying “everything” in response to being asked what wasn’t going right for him at the plate right now, Turner got the day off for the finale on Wednesday.
Of course, on a team that set a new franchise record with eight All-Stars, it’s Harper who is the face of the club. He was ice-cold when he made the comment about needing to step up, a remark that was probably aimed largely at himself. In the three games since, Harper has gone 0-for-14 with five strikeouts. After winning NL Player of the Month in both May and June, Harper finished July with just a .149 batting average.
“Going through it, it just is what it is,” Harper said of his current slump. “Just try to battle out of it as best I can. I thought my at-bats were better today. I saw a lot of pitches, so that’s good. But yeah, just gotta find a way.”
History (and common sense) lead you to believe that Harper is going to get right. He’s not far removed from looking like a serious NL MVP competitor, and the .968 career OPS that he has in August is by far the highest of any month. Harper admitted he’s looking forward to the calendar flipping to August, and there’s a very real chance that the 1-for-30 stretch he’s currently mired in is just a distant memory in a few weeks.
As for the Phillies? Well, the “superstars got to show up” theory might be pretty accurate in predicting the team’s record. Harper had one of the worst months of his career, while the All-Star Break seemed to halt the momentum Turner had towards pushing his way into the NL Player of the Month conversation. Unsurprisingly, the Phillies went 10-14 in a month where their two best offensive players had major slumps, and Ranger Suárez posted a 6.61 ERA over three starts before landing on the injured list.
Harper is confident he and the Phillies will get the train back on the tracks, but knows that with a 10-game West Coast trip that features matchups with three teams currently in playoff position — the Seattle Mariners, Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks — they aren’t about to catch any breaks.
“Obviously like I said, you don’t wanna play the game this way,” Harper said. “You don’t wanna play from behind or not win series, because baseball is all about winning series and being hot at the right time and doing things the right way.
“And I can say that we haven’t really been playing good baseball on both sides of the ball … guys on base, things like that. Pretty sloppy as well,” Harper added. “I think we all know that as a team. Like I said, gotta turn the page and turn it into August. And we got three really good teams we’re about to play again. We just gotta cowboy up and play the right way.”
Even for as disastrous as July was at times for the Phillies, they still have the best record in the National League at 65-53. They have a 6 1/2 game lead over the Atlanta Braves in the NL East. It’s a spot they would have signed up for before the season.
At the same time, the wins do need to start to come again. It’s fair to think that they will, but the superstars need to perform like superstars for the Phillies to get over the hump and win a World Series. That applies to Harper more than anyone.
“I mean, we’re a damn good team,” Harper said. “It’s not that hard. It’s baseball, it’s the way kind of the game works. Like I said, we don’t wanna play the game that way but we’re a really good team. We got really good players in here. Just gotta keep going.”
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