Bryce Harper's power show latest step toward fulfilling destiny

WASHINGTON — Bryce Harper, it seems, will always provoke responses that span sports' emotional spectrum, from adoration to outsized expectations, to awe accompanied by visceral dislike.

Harper is 22, but he's six years into a personal news cycle that began with his appearance on the cover of Sports Illustrated at 16, continued through an amateur career in which he was targeted as much as touted, and stretched into four seasons in the major leagues, where the promise of more almost always trumped the historic nature of his accomplishments.

Now, however, hype and promise have been met and perhaps exceeded by power and production from the Washington Nationals' right fielder.

With a few swings of his bat, Harper turned three otherwise nondescript games at Nationals Park into a historic march: Three home runs one game, two the next, and finally, a two-run, walk-off homer against the Atlanta Braves on Saturday.

Sunday, he nearly made it a stunning seven home runs in four games before most of a Mother's Day crowd found their seats; his 401-foot shot to dead center field in the first inning was merely an RBI double.

Harper leads the National League in home runs, with 11. He also leads the NL in walks with 28, and that potent combination of power and discipline is a simple, if incomplete, bit of evidence the so-called Chosen One has arrived.

Not that anyone's ready to close the door on Harper's potential. Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo, for one, said Sunday he has a "hitting ceiling in my mind. I've never made it public."

Yet three years and a month since Rizzo summoned 19-year-old Harper to the major leagues, it seems the hardest part might be over. Harper's career certainly hasn't reached its apex, but the initial battles of both perception and production have been won.

"He has his fans," Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez says, "and he has his people who don't like him for whatever reason. But I think the young man has done a terrific job growing up under the microscope of the major leagues."

Sunday morning, Harper arrived to a gaggle of news media after his six-homer, 12-RBI barrage – he's the fifth in major league history to hit those three-game marks. He fielded questions for a bit more than two minutes, sticking to his theme that the Nationals are a "great team, and everybody knows it," while doing his best to deflect comparisons about his historical track.

"I'm just trying," he said, "to be the Bryce I am."

That Bryce – the one on the field – continues to evolve.

Patient aggression

Sure, it's early. Saturday's walk-off win pushed the Nationals above .500, and 130 games remain. But statistically and anecdotally, Harper's hitting – and playing – approaches seem to have matured.

He's drawing walks at a 20.2% clip entering Sunday, nearly double his career rate of 10.4% entering the season. While pitchers are wise to take care with Harper because the Nationals have been decimated by injury – they're still missing standout third baseman Anthony Rendon – he has impressed the club's most prominent newcomer.

"Even from the beginning of the season, you're seeing improvements from where he's at now," says pitcher Max Scherzer, one of the game's most analytical minds who signed a $210 million deal with the Nationals before the season. "I feel like he's having better plate appearances every single time. He's drawing his walks, he has an understanding of, 'I don't have to swing at the borderline pitch.' "

In particular, Scherzer says, is when Harper gets in a positive hitter's count.

"The really good stuff that shows you he's really developing is when it's a 2-0 count, he understands, 'I'm going to get a fastball down and away,' " Scherzer says. "Pitch me down and away, I'll take my base hit to left.

"Then, there's situations where he says, 'Hey, this is the time to pull and lift.' He's doing that as well. That's that Miggy stuff – that's what Miggy does. To see him do something like that is impressive."

Miggy, of course, is Miguel Cabrera, Scherzer's teammate with the Detroit Tigers for five seasons. Scherzer doesn't yet equate Harper with the two-time MVP and Triple Crown winner – "Difference is, Miggy takes that (outside) pitch and hits a home run with it," he says – but says Harper's baseball IQ at this stage "is some big-time stuff."

One element within that is staying on the field. Harper's body slam into the Dodger Stadium fence waylaid his 2013 season – he played in 118 games – while a headfirst slide and resulting broken thumb sidelined him from April 25 to June 30 in 2014.

Rizzo believes Harper's good fortune this season will continue.

"He's matured in that aspect, to take care of his body and to make sure that he stays healthy," Rizzo says, "because he knows when he's in the lineup, he makes us a better lineup."

And manager Matt Williams says even Harper's home runs are a testament to his growth.

"It's not how far, it's how many," Williams said. "He understands that at this point."

Perception and reality

In a sense, Harper was made for the Internet age, his kiss-blowing in the minor leagues and "clown question" response his rookie year the sort of yarns that launch a million clicks. While such episodes all but permanently attached brash to his name, they seemed to betray the fact his persona stemmed largely from competitive zeal.

Alas, perceptions – in Harper's case, dating to high school – die hard, especially in the digital age.

"It's part of the reason we get paid so well – people watch TV and pay attention to that stuff, so you can't really complain about it too much," says Ryan Zimmerman, the Nationals first baseman who was their original first-round draft pick in 2005. "But it's a completely different landscape than 10 years ago. Things change. I don't want to sound like the grumpy old man complaining about everything, but it's a lot different than it was 10 years ago. "

Zimmerman says the older Nationals hardly shrink from Harper's proclamations, such as his "Where's my ring?" comments this spring after the club added Scherzer.

"He's just being honest," Zimmerman says. "He's never said anything malicious or hurtful or talked bad about anyone else."

Yet elements of the baseball establishment still don't care for the bluster. An ESPN player poll this spring determined Harper was the game's most overrated player – for the second consecutive year.

To which Gonzalez says, whatever. After all, Harper's current stat line – a .300 average, .435 on-base percentage and 1.090 OPS – speaks for itself quite nicely.

"Some people get rubbed the wrong way," the Braves manager says. "To me, there's nothing to rub – he plays the game the right way. I got no problems. Some people may not like the hair, the beard, some of the stuff he says in the paper. But all things considered, he's done a nice job growing up in the major leagues. He really has.

"You know how it is: There's 50 guys that love you and five guys that hate you. And it's the five guys that hate you who end up getting heard."

And somehow, the haters can't look away.

"If people don't like that," Zimmerman says, "maybe they should stop wanting to know where he's going to dinner every night, following him on Twitter, wanting to see every single picture."

Perhaps the attention – positive, negative and otherwise – will subside as Harper gets further from his wunderkind status and becomes more a rank and file major league star. Of course, he has been in something of a catch-22 – the greater he plays, the more attention he receives.

And even as he comes into something that might resemble his prime, there's still, as Rizzo notes, no sign he's hitting a peak.

"There's even more to his game that he can improve upon," Scherzer says. "And that's scary."

PHOTOS: The Chosen One - Bryce Harper