Despite playing through pain in his right wrist throughout the season, including an IL stint when said wrist got inflamed, Bryce Harper still managed to put together a fantastic 2025 season for the Philadelphia Phillies. Unless of course, you're president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski, in which case you feel as though the first baseman did not have an "elite year."
With a Gold Glove nod for his elite defense, he added 27 home runs, 75 RBIs, a .261 batting average and an .844 OPS. While his OPS was his lowest since 2016 and his 129 OPS+ was his lowest since 2019, Harper still ranked 22nd out of 145 qualified players.
However, Harper did not play the full 162-game season, and yet his metrics were comparable, if not better than that of his, one could argue, elite 2024 season, when he also played through injury.
Phillies need to add protection for Bryce Harper who doesn't see many pitches to hit
With the secret of how to approach the Phillies' slugger at the plate becoming more evident, Harper is seeing fewer pitches to hit, especially when it comes to decent pitches in the zone. In fact, according to MLB.com's Todd Zolecki, Harper saw pitches in the zone only 43 percent of the time. That's the fewest out of 532 players who saw a minimum of 200 pitches.
The combined .720 OPS of all the Phillies' cleanup hitters, and they had several, ranked 20th in all of baseball, allowing for opposing pitchers to attack Harper with pitches out of the zone.
Kyle Schwarber saw some time as the cleanup hitter but eventually moved up to the No. 2 spot. The constant injuries the Phillies faced this year led to a carousel of Alec Bohm, when healthy, J.T. Realmuto and Nick Castellanos, whose move up the lineup is arguably what tanked his second-half plate approach.
None of those three, especially looking at their 2025 season, should've batted fourth. Yet they all did at some point.
If, and when, Dombrowski starts to address the team's needs during the offseason, one essential for the survival of not just Harper's offensive production but the team's production is a consistent cleanup hitter. With someone steady batting behind Harper, statistics like him seeing only 39.1 percent of pitches in the zone in the NLDS, which ranked 83rd out of 84 players, won't happen again.
Whether the Phillies manage to re-sign Schwarber or sign a new potential cleanup hitter to mash behind Harper will remain to be seen until after the final out of the World Series. However, either with the duo Philadelphia already knows and loves of Harper and Schwarber or a hypothetical addition of a slugging righty, like pending free agent Alex Bregman, should give opposing pitchers more of a challenge if there's a hitter with just as much pop behind Harper, instead of in front of him.