Will the Nationals Miss the Playoffs If Bryce Harper Can't Stay Healthy in 2013?

The Washington Nationals should consider lining the inside of Bryce Harper's uniforms with Kevlar. Or maybe they could give him the Wolverine treatment and line his skeleton with adamantium.

Whatever it takes to keep Harper healthy, really. The Nationals want to get to the postseason, and it's clear now that they're going to need Harper to get there. He's their ticket.

Alas, that has become an iffy proposition given what we've learned about Harper and the Nationals so far in 2013.

First, we've learned that the potential Harper flashed last season as a 19-year-old rookie was no mirage. His .973 OPS this season is a 156-point improvement over his .817 OPS from last season and is the best OPS of any Nationals regular by over 100 points.

According to FanGraphs, Harper is also Washington's leader in Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA) and Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+). He's the Nationals' best offensive player, and by a significant margin to boot.

Second, we've learned that Harper is not indestructible. Far from it, actually.

Per his injury records on Baseball Prospectus, four ailments have already robbed Harper of 10 games this season. The most recent of these is Harper's bout with knee bursitis, a sort of belated gift from his collision with the right field wall at Dodger Stadium a few weeks back.

Lesson No. 3 is the one that must have Mike Rizzo and Davey Johnson losing sleep at night: When Harper has been out, the Nationals have been a downright lousy team.

In the 10 games Harper has missed this season, the Nationals have a record of 2-8. They also lost a game in which he wasn't in the starting lineup, essentially making them a 2-9 team when Harper doesn't play.

And no, the losses can't be chalked up to bad luck.

The Nationals haven't been a great offensive team this season, ranking 27th in MLB with an average of 3.52 runs per game. But not surprisingly, they've been better with Harper in the starting lineup, scoring 3.63 runs per game in the 43 games he's started.

That's still not an impressive figure, but compare it to Washington's offensive output in the 11 games Harper hasn't started. In those games, they've averaged 3.09 runs per game and have been shut out twice.

It just so happens that the Nats haven't been good at keeping runs off the board in Harper-less games either. They've allowed an average of 3.58 runs per game in the games he's started and an average of 5.36 runs per game in the games he hasn't started.

It adds up to a plus-two run differential in the 43 games Harper has started and a minus-25 run differential in the games he hasn't started.

All of this is the statistical way of saying, "That Bryce Harper guy? Yeah, he's kinda important."

Meanwhile, the Nationals' playoff odds are slipping. The club has lost three out of four since Harper last played on Sunday, and ESPN.com now has Washington's odds to make the postseason at 20.3 percent. There are seven National League teams ahead of it in that category.

Baseball Prospectus likes Washington's odds more...but only slightly. It has the Nats' playoff odds at 34.8 percent, seventh-best in the Senior Circuit behind the San Francisco Giants. The club's odds have fallen over seven percent from where they were a week ago.

So the Nationals wouldn't qualify for the postseason if the season ended today, and neither ESPN.com nor Baseball Prospectus likes their chances of qualifying for the postseason several months from now. 

Ryan Zimmerman made it clear that he doesn't want to hear stuff like this. The Nats third baseman told Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post that "nerds shouldn’t do that stuff.” I'm operating under the assumption that Zimmerman then grumbled something unintelligible and told some nearby kids to get off his lawn.

But really, it doesn't take nerds or numbers to see that the Nats are on thin ice these days and that the ice has gotten increasingly thinner while Harper has been out. Though they're by far the more talented team, it doesn't reflect well on the Nats that they're only a game up on a Philadelphia Phillies team riddled with more weak spots than a low-level video game boss.

The good news? Harper could be back soon. James Wagner of the Washington Post reported on Thursday that Harper has been able to participate in some baseball activities the last couple of days and that he could be back in the starting lineup as soon as Friday evening.

The bad news? Harper probably isn't going to be 100 percent even if he does come back.

Harper tried to play on his bad knee after he first hurt it on May 13, and that obviously didn't end up working out. Though he was able to participate in baseball activities the last couple of days, Wagner wrote that Harper didn't appear to be completely recovered.

As obvious as it is that the Nats are worse off without Harper, it's possible they've been shooting themselves in the foot with their wait-and-see approach to his recovery. Jay Jaffe of Sports Illustrated was justified in pondering if the Nationals should have put Harper on the 15-day disabled list after he first hurt himself.

UPDATE: Saturday, June 1 at 2:50 p.m. ET

Jon Heyman of CBS Sports reports that this weekend is a no-go for Harper and that he has ended up on the DL:

"

Bryce harper goes on DL. Will be backdated with expectation it won't be long before he's ready. @acomak 1st reported likely

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) June 1, 2013"

Looking more and more like Harper should have been put on the DL two weeks ago.

-- End of update --

Had the Nationals put Harper on the DL after he first crashed into the wall at Dodger Stadium, it's possible he would be fully healthy today and ready, willing and able to spearhead the Nationals' charge to October. Instead, his health is still a question mark more than two weeks after his collision at Dodger Stadium, and the Nats' playoff odds are in peril.

The Nats had better hope that Harper can go from being rickety to being A-OK in short order. If he can do that, he'll be able to stay on the field, keep producing and help the Nats crawl out of their hole.

If Harper's health continues to come and go, the Nationals are going to be in more trouble than they already are. A mere 11 games without Harper in the starting lineup has rendered them a borderline postseason contender. The more games they have to play without him, the more they're going to be in danger of falling out of the discussion entirely.

So I say again: Kevlar. Or adamantium. Whatever it takes.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.

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