PHILADELPHIA — Alec Bohm returned from the injured list last month and got eight hits in three games, giving rise to a theory: If Bohm stayed hot, maybe the star hitter who precedes him in the Phillies’ batting order would see more strikes.

“I doubt it,” Bryce Harper said.

Harper knew how that sounded, so he made clear that he meant no disrespect to Bohm. But his point remained. Harper faced a lower rate of pitches in the zone (43%) than any hitter in baseball this season (minimum 150 pitches), so the notion that any Phillies lineup protection short of peak Mike Schmidt would affect how he was pitched ranked somewhere between wishful thinking and delusion.

It has been this way for most of Harper’s life. He recalls being 11 years old and competing in travel tournaments in which the opposing coach would point to him and direct pitchers not to give him anything to hit. In 2016, the Cubs walked him 13 times, four intentionally, in 19 plate appearances over four games at Wrigley Field.

Quite simply, teams game-plan against Harper specifically.

“When we go into a series, we circle guys’ names, too,” Harper said earlier in the season. “It happens that way.”

Even so, there was something different about this season. When Harper did get pitches in the zone, he didn’t do as much damage. As such, he didn’t produce his typical numbers.

Harper reached base at a .357 clip, his lowest mark since 2014. He slugged .487 with an .844 OPS, his worst totals since 2016. He mashed 27 home runs despite missing a month with an inflamed right wrist. But although he outproduced the league average by 29% based on OPS+, he has been 42% better than average over his career.

So, upon being asked at his end-of-the-season news conference on Oct. 16 — coincidentally, Harper’s 33rd birthday — if the Phillies believe this was a down year and not the start of a downturn for the Face Of The Franchise, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski offered an eyebrow-raising answer.

“He’s still an All-Star-caliber player,” he said. “He didn’t have an elite season like he has had in the past. And I guess we only find out if he becomes elite [again] or he continues to be good. If you look around the league, Freddie Freeman, he’s a really good player, right? Is he elite like he was before? Probably not to the same extent. Freddie is a tremendous player, and that, to me, is Bryce.

“Can he rise to the next level again? I don’t really know that answer. He’s the one that will dictate that more than anything else.

“I don’t think he’s content with the year that he had. And again, it wasn’t a bad year. But when you think of Bryce Harper, you think of elite, right? You think of one of the top-10 players in baseball, and I don’t think [this season] fit into that category. But again, a very good player. I’ve seen guys at his age — again, he’s not old — that level off. Or I’ve seen guys rise again."

Maybe we just aren’t accustomed to that level of candor from a high-ranking executive, especially at an end-of-season news conference. Or maybe Dombrowski calculated that challenging a future Hall of Famer to be better would have the effect of poking a grizzly.

Regardless, it sparked conversation — even idle speculation about Harper’s future with six years and $153.25 million left on his contract.

“I’ve been reading that, ‘Oh, the Phillies may trade Bryce Harper.’ That couldn’t be further from the truth,” Dombrowski said the other day on Foul Territory TV. “We love him, think he’s a great player. He’s a very important part of our team.

“When I think of Bryce Harper, it’s a compliment. Because the reality is, there are eight to 10 players in the game of baseball every year, when they’re not, let’s say, in the MVP consideration for whatever reason — sometimes it can be an injury factor, sometimes they just have a bad year — it’s not an elite year for them.

“I’ve seen him have better years. I look for him to have better years.”

Especially if the Phillies give him more help.

Missing the mistakes

Let there be no doubt about Harper’s state of mind in the aftermath of the Phillies’ second consecutive divisional round knockout.

“I want [a championship] more than probably a lot of people,” he said. “I want to hold that trophy. On a personal level, I’m going to work my butt off this offseason again and get ready for next year and hopefully take another swing at it and see what we can do.”

But who will follow Harper in the batting order?

It was a topic of conversation early this season. Harper got walked intentionally twice with runners in scoring position on April 11 in Atlanta, prompting Rob Thomson to tweak the lineup the next day. Rather than keeping a struggling Bohm — or fellow right-handed hitters J.T. Realmuto or Nick Castellanos — behind Harper, the manager moved Kyle Schwarber into that spot.

“Just trying to protect Harper the best we can,” Thomson said.

Schwarber should have represented Secret Service-level lineup protection. He batted behind Harper for 42 consecutive games and hit 12 homers in that span.

And yet Harper didn’t see many more pitches in the zone.

“It’s actually gotten worse, which is crazy,” Harper told The Philadelphia Inquirer in May during a series in Cleveland. “Just got to try to hone in as much as possible and hit the mistakes. That’s one thing where [Barry] Bonds was so good at. You get the mistakes and let the other ones go.”

Usually, it’s a trademark of Harper’s, too.

Through six seasons with the Phillies (2019-24), he saw only 42.6% of pitches in the zone, tied for second-lowest rate among 293 players who faced at least 500 pitches, according to Statcast. But he punished those strikes, slugging .680, fifth-best behind Aaron Judge (.763), Shohei Ohtani (.710), Yordan Alvarez (.695) and Mike Trout (.695).

This year, with opponents still coming after him in the zone only 43% of the time, Harper’s slugging percentage on those pitches fell to .591. His weighted on-base average slipped, too, from .424 to .378.

Reasons for the drop-off weren’t clear. Harper’s average bat speed wasn’t diminished (74.2 mph vs. 74.0 mph in 2024). His average exit velocity (91.3 mph) and hard-hit rate (47.5%) were consistent with the last two seasons (91.5 mph, 47.5%).

There was a notable difference in how teams attacked Harper. He faced fewer fastballs (46.7%) and more breaking pitches — curveballs and sliders (41.3%) — than ever before. By comparison, the breakdown last season was 52.9% fastballs and 32.3% breaking stuff.

Why the change?

“Because I’m not hitting them,” Harper said. “Like, don’t try to fix what’s not broken, right?”

Indeed, Harper slugged .438 against curveballs and sliders, down from .458 in 2024, .466 in 2023, and .495 in 2022.

At least Harper didn’t overreact by swinging at many more pitches out of the zone. His chase rate ticked up to 35.6%, according to Statcast, but wasn’t far off his 33.4% mark from each of the previous two seasons. He walked in 12.1% of his plate appearances, nearly identical to his 12% mark from 2024.

But as the Phillies seek explanations for Harper’s subpar season, they can start by tracing why he didn’t crush as many pitches — of any variety — in the zone as usual.

Better protection

Maybe it would’ve helped if Thomson stuck with Schwarber behind Harper.

Instead, Schwarber moved into the No. 2 hole while Harper was sidelined in June and stayed there en route to joining Ryan Howard in the pantheon of Phillies’ 50-homer hitters. Once Harper came back, he was most often followed in the order by Realmuto (41 games), then Bohm (18) and Castellanos (13).

Harper was the Phillies’ primary No. 3 hitter (117 games); Phillies cleanup hitters combined to rank 20th in slugging (.408) and OPS (.720).

Scott Boras, Harper’s agent, didn’t respond to messages this week. But he told MLB.com that the best way for the Phillies to restore Harper’s elite-level performance is to “give Bryce Harper more pitches to hit.”

Translation: Upgrade the lineup protection.

Maybe it’s as simple as re-signing Schwarber and sticking him in the cleanup spot. Maybe the Phillies can add even more slug by putting the $24.5 million that will come off the books with the departures of Max Kepler, Jordan Romano and David Robertson into an offer for, say, Alex Bregman, then swapping Bohm for Angels outfielder Taylor Ward.

But unless 2006 Ryan Howard comes out of retirement, history suggests that Harper will continue to see fewer pitches in the zone than almost any hitter in baseball.

He needs to get back to crushing them.

“I think he’s highly motivated to have the best season of his career next year,” Thomson said. “He hasn’t told me this, but that type of person — and I’ve seen it before — they’ve had bad years, they’ll go like gangbusters during the offseason to get better because they want to get back to where they normally are at. I think that’s just Harp’s mindset. I think that’s what he’s going to do."

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