Major League Baseball

Bryce Harper's second MVP award shows that he was worthy of the hype

Published Nov. 19, 2021 12:43 p.m. ET

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By Jake Mintz
FOX Sports MLB Writer

Bryce Harper entered our lives earlier than most athletes do. 

There he was, at the age of 16, goofy eye black and all, anointed as "The Chosen One" and "Baseball’s LeBron" on the July 8, 2009, cover of Sports Illustrated. The cover photo was shot to make Harper look larger than the Vegas desert mountains in the background, a massive teenager destined to be an even bigger deal.

He was a household name — in baseball houses, at least — well before the Washington Nationals took him with the first pick of the 2010 MLB Draft, more than a year removed from his SI cover. I was an incoming high school sophomore in the D.C. area at the time, and Harper was the topic of many travel-ball dugout conversations. A baseball magician capable of 570-foot homers and 96-mph throws — and just a few years older than us! Preposterous!

But with that fame and notoriety came monumental expectations. And when Harper was merely very good rather than otherworldly in his first three MLB seasons — which, by the way, were at ages 19-21, while my bum self was posting an ERA north of 8.00 in college — the haters started to pop their heads out of the sand. The chants soon followed: "O-VER-RA-TED."

On Thursday, Harper took home his second National League MVP award. He did so by a pretty comfortable margin, with 17 of the 30 first-place votes. The 28-year-old walloped 35 big ones this season for the Phillies, along with a league-leading 42 doubles and a 1.044 OPS. 

His supersonic second half, in which he OPSed 1.188, was enough for him to overtake both his former Nationals teammate Juan Soto and the newly anointed face of baseball, Fernando Tatis Jr.

In capturing the award, Harper became the 32nd player in baseball history with multiple MVP awards. Twenty of those guys are in the Hall of Fame. Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera will be there soon. Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds might join them one day. Mike Trout certainly will. The overall numbers for Roger Maris, Juan González and Dale Murphy fell just short. 

Harper, with another half-decade or so of excellence under his belt, will surely join the conversation.

More than 12 years after he first graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, Harper has solidified himself as one of the game’s truly great players. Despite the criticism — or, perhaps, because of it — the home run hitter that was promised has actualized into something spectacular. He has become a fan favorite, one of those athletes everyone calls by their first name. But it hasn’t always been that way.

Before the 2014 and 2015 seasons, an anonymous poll of MLB players in ESPN The Magazine voted Harper the most overrated player in baseball. His first MVP award in 2015 helped silence some of that noise, albeit temporarily. That season, he posted the best OPS+ since Bonds and took home the NL MVP by a unanimous vote, something that hasn’t happened since. But 2015 also saw his Nationals collapse in August and September, giving the division away to the World Series-bound New York Mets.

The rest of Harper's Nationals tenure was littered with still fabulous yet incomplete seasons. His 2018 Home Run Derby performance was pure electricity (and the best sporting event I’ve seen live), but his inability to return to his 2015 peak left people wanting more. It certainly didn’t help that the Nationals were bounced four consecutive times in the NLDS, and Harper’s tenure ended with zero playoff series victories.

He did wrap up another two Most Overrated Awards, though, in the annual Athletic poll before the 2018 and 2019 seasons. In that 2019 poll, which came just weeks after he signed a $330 million mega-deal with Philadelphia, Harper got more than 62% of the vote. If you look at the @MLB tweet from when the contract was announced, you’ll see more than a few responses with the word "overrated."

Looking back, it’s wild how disliked and overlooked Harper was. When he penned that deal in 2019, he had hit 184 homers through his age-25 season, 12th-most by that age in baseball history and five more than literally Hank Aaron. He had a career OPS of .900, six All-Star appearances and an MVP award.

Yet he was also the recipient of so much scorn.

Maybe some of it had to do with his overconfident bravado. Maybe some of it had to do with the Nationals winning a title immediately after his departure. I think a lot of it also had to do with Mike Trout.

Everything Harper was destined to be, all the unrealistic expectations thrust upon him as a teenager — Trout actually achieved all that and more. Harper could casually rip 30 bombs a year, but his rival across the country put up nine-WAR seasons with the skills of a superhero and panache of a desk chair. 

Both players played their first full MLB season in 2012, and by 2013, Trout was unequivocally accepted as the best ballplayer alive. That has yet to change. Harper has been outstanding; Trout has been a top-five player ever.

That’s not anyone’s fault — not Trout’s, not Harper’s. Fair or not, Harper always has been and always will be compared to Trout. They journeyed up the minors at the same time and topped prospect lists together. Trout’s understated, humble-guy aura is the polar opposite of Harper’s brash, hair-twirling, superstar act. 

Harper carries himself like he's the best player on the planet, but the cold fact is that he isn't and never has been. That has clearly rubbed some people — including his peers around the league, who slapped him with that overrated label four times — the wrong way.

But both Trout and Harper are still chasing the same thing: a ring. Or damn, even just a playoff series victory. Neither Trout nor Harper has ever accomplished that. This year, Harper single-handedly pulled a sleepy Phillies team into contention like one of those World Strongest Man guys does with an 18-wheeler. 

But unfortunately, baseball is the most team-oriented team sport. One juggernaut cannot drag his companions to the promised land. Harper, no matter how he tries, cannot be LeBron James in that way ... unless he learns how to come out of the bullpen, too.

All Harper can do now is continue to perform, and as he enters just his age-29 season, there’s no reason to think he’ll be tailing off anytime soon. A Hall of Fame career, the saying goes, is built in a player's 30s. Harper isn’t even there yet. He’ll probably reach 300 career homers next year. Another MVP award or two isn’t out of the question. 

Thankfully, this brave "Bryce Harper Is Actually Underrated" hot take you’re reading isn’t even a hot take anymore. We’re another injury-plagued Trout season away from a litany of "Which One Would You Rather Have?" think pieces. A front-office person recently told me they’d rather have Harper than Trout over the next five years, so maybe we’re already there.

But no matter what’s to come, Bryce Harper is already everything he was supposed to be.

Jake Mintz is the louder half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball analyst for FOX Sports. He’s an Orioles fan living in New York City, and thus, he leads a lonely existence most Octobers. If he’s not watching baseball, he’s almost certainly riding his bike. You can follow him on Twitter @Jake_Mintz.

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Major League Baseball

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Jake Mintz