The Philadelphia Phillies head into the offseason with some questions about the offense. They have all the aspirations of winning the World Series year in and year out but have fallen out of the NLDS in two straight postseasons. One of the biggest driving factors in the Phillies' success is star first baseman Bryce Harper.
Battling a wrist injury for some of the season, Harper had a down year in 2025 with a .261 batting average and 27 home runs while driving in 75 runs. His .844 OPS was also his lowest since joining the Phillies in 2019.
The good news is Phillies hitting coach Kevin Long doesn't see this as a time to panic.
There's nothing wrong with Bryce Harper according to Phillies hitting coach Kevin Long
After the season, Long sat down with The Philadelphia Inquirer's Scott Lauber on the Phillies Extra podcast and discussed the nuances of Harper's season (subscription required), and where to go from here. Despite his wrist injury that caused him to miss time, Harper still accrued respectable numbers by year's end and Long isn't worried about the production.
"And then he got a little PRP [platelet-rich plasma] injection," Long said, per Lauber. "He got it taken care of and came back, and I thought he swung the bat really well. It’s a short season for him, because he didn’t get all his at-bats. So if he plays another month, what are those numbers looking like? He ended up with 27 homers. Drove in 75. Does that end up being 35 and 98? I don’t know. So, we’re really talking about minor things."
What Phillies fans are most afraid of is the possible regression. Yes, it'll happen with age, but Harper is still under contract for six more seasons. Fans want him to still be a catalyst for the offense. Luckily, Long still views Harper in that light.
"I was pleased with Bryce’s year, what he did, how he performed," Long told Lauber. "If you look at everybody’s numbers and what they did, Bryce was a big part of our offense, which was a top-five offense, and performed very well during the season, and actually in the playoffs did a stand-up job as well."
"He saw the least amount of strikes in baseball," Long added. "And he probably ended up swinging too much and probably needed to control the strike zone a little bit better than he did."
According to FanGraphs, Harper did in fact see the least amount of pitches in the strike zone in 2025. He saw strikes at a 42.9 percent rate, the fewest in MLB and three percent lower than Oneil Cruz who saw the second-fewest.
Phillies fans and Long are both glad that Harper is still a Phillie until his eventual retirement from the sport, but the Phillies still need their star at his best in 2026 and beyond. The Phillies still haven't won a World Series in the Bryce Harper era, so 2026 is still another chance to make that dream a reality.