A-Rod, Bryce Harper on target for 'age-related' history
Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees and Bryce Harper of the Nationals are having excellent seasons. That's especially the case once you consider how old each slugger is.
By
Dayn Perry
•
2 min read
You don't really need to apply context to the seasons of Yankees DH Alex Rodriguez and Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper in order to make them look more impressive. They're impressive, full stop. After Wednesday's slate, A-Rod is now batting .275/.375/.518 in a season in which the average major-league hitter owns a line of .253/.314/.396. As well, A-Rod on Wednesday against the Orioles (NYY 4, BAL 3) passed Lou Brock on the all-time hits list and clouted his 20th homer of the season, all on the same swing ...
Authoritative! There's also this ...
With his home run tonight, @AROD has more 20-homer seasons (16) than all but 4 players in @MLB history. pic.twitter.com/Q2sB1q2aGE
— MLB Stat of the Day (@MLBStatoftheDay) July 23, 2015
As for Harper, mull this over for a moment ...
@DSzymborski Bryce Harper 2-4 with a BB today. His OPS fell. #Unfair
— Chaz Feinweb (@ChazFeinweb) July 23, 2015
Indeed, Harper against the Mets on Wednesday (WAS 4, NYM 3) tallied two singles and a walk in five trips to the plate. That's an OPS of 1.100 for the game. Since Harper entered Wednesday with a 2015 OPS of 1.152, yes, his OPS went down despite the fact that reached base 60 percent of the time in this one. When that's a mathematical truth -- and it is in this instance -- you're having a darned fine season.
Now let's circle back to the notion of context that I mentioned earlier. A-Rod and Harper are thriving by any standard, but they're thriving in a historical sense once you consider each player's age. Rodriguez is 39, which is an age at which most players are long retired from the game, willingly or otherwise. Harper is 22, which is an age at which most players are in High-A ball.
When it comes to A-Rod, he now finds himself on pace for 35 homers in 2015. Since we're more than halfway through the season, it's no longer an exercise in absurdity to talk about paces. So we're talking about them. If that pace holds, then A-Rod will join Hank Aaron in 1973, Barry Bonds in 2004, and Steve Finley, also in 2004, as the lone players to hit 35 or more in a season at age 39 or older. When it comes to OPS+, which is simply OPS adjusted to reflect home park and league run-scoring environments, A-Rod's current mark of 145 would be the fifth-highest ever by a qualifier age 39 or older. The names ahead of him on that list? Bonds, Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, and Willie Mays. Decent fellow travelers, those.
Harper, meantime, is on pace for 47 homers, which would tie Eddie Mathews' 1953 record for most homers in a season by a player age 22 or younger. Harper's aforementioned OPS, which after Wednesday cratered all the way down to 1.152 (OK, so it decreased at some point beyond the third decimal place), is such that it puts him on target to register the second-highest mark ever by a qualifier who's 22 or younger. The batsman ahead of him on that list is Ted Williams in his venerated 1941 season (1.287), when he batted .406. Walking with the gods, is what that is.
So as (very) good as A-Rod has been this season and as genuinely great as Harper has been, they're even more impressive once you compare them to their age peer groups throughout history.
NOTE: Article initially omitted Aaron from list of most home runs by a player age 39 or older. Thanks to @IanPowers for the correction.
(Historical data via the Baseball-Reference Play Index)
