The Rookie

One of the best things about baseball is seeing something for the first time or something you haven't seen in a long time.  There's a big crop of young players with huge potential now in their first or second year in the majors.  Mike Trout of the Angels, who is 20 may be the best of all of them.

Bryce Harper is 19 and a starting player on the first place Washington Nationals (those are four words I did not expect to be writing when the season began) and is off to a great start - it's not just the statistics - it's his style and aggressiveness.  And it is very unusual for a teenager to play regularly at a big league level.
 
Grantland has a good article on Bryce by Rany Jazayerli . Go and read it. Here's a chart from the story showing the top five On Base + Slugging Percentages (OPS) for 19 year olds and where Harper fits.  It's pretty good company - two Hall of Famers (Ott/Mantle), one player who probably would have been in the Hall but for a terrible injury when he was 22 (Conigliaro) and one who might have made it if he hadn't blown out his knee (Cedeno).

Year	Age	Name	OPS
1928	19	Mel Ott	.921
2012	19	Bryce Harper	.908
1964	19	Tony Conigliaro	.883
1951	19	Mickey Mantle	.792
1970	19	Cesar Cedeno	.790

It's a small sample size for Harper but it sure is fun to think about what he might turn out to be.

On Sunday afternoon we were at Fenway to see the Red Sox play the Nationals.  Harper didn't start but entered the game in the 9th inning as a pinch hitter with the score tied at 3.  Harper walked.  The next batter (Bernadina) hit a liner into the right field corner.  I kept my eyes on Harper and watched him score from first.  It was like seeing a Roadrunner cartoon with little puffs of dust flying from his heels.  The kid really motored around the bases and scored the winning run.

And, as an extra added bonus it turns out he is a gifted societal observer:



For the Sox, other than watching Big Papi go 3 for 4 (homer, double, single) the only other highlights on Sunday were Jarrod Saltalamacchia striking out four times and Adrian Gonzalez hitting three weak grounders and a popup to the right side of the infield.  Looks like I may have to reactivate my plan from earlier in the season.