At Just 22, Bryce Harper's Light-Tower Power Ready to Join MLB's Best

It's time to switch up the narrative on Bryce Harper. Instead of talking about what he might be, let's start talking about what he's becoming.

Here's the short version: He's becoming one of the very best power hitters in Major League Baseball. And to boot, you can even say he's doing so ahead of schedule.

If you missed what the Washington Nationals right fielder did Wednesday afternoon against the Miami Marlins at Nationals Park, you missed a hell of a show. In leading the Nationals to a 7-5 victory, Harper homered not once, not twice, but thrice.

Because we all love watching dingers in moving pictures, let's stop and take a gander. The first looked like this:

And the second looked like this:

And the third looked like this:

For lack of a better made-up word, that's a lot of dingerage. 

It looks like even more dingerage in the context of Harper's age. Because this is his fourth season in the big leagues, it's easy to forget that he's still only 22 years old. It's rare for players that young to go deep three times in a game, as ESPN Stats & Info can vouch:

And of course, this isn't some random flare-up.

Harper came into 2015 with 55 career home runs through his age-21 season, putting him in the top 12 all-time for home runs at such a young age. And with eight home runs already in 2015, he's well on his way to carrying on as one of the great young home run hitters in baseball history.

Perhaps more to the point, his eight homers also put him in elite company in the here and now. He's only one home run shy of Adrian Gonzalez and Todd Frazier for the National League lead. He's on pace for a 45-home-run season, and the only thing that could stop him from getting there is health.

Because for the first time in his career, it looks like Harper's ability has finally caught up to his potential.

Brad Mills-USA TODAY Sports

First, understand that there's more to Harper's 2015 season than just his power explosion. A related story is how he's also made strides as a hitter.

You can tell as much just by looking at how Harper has boosted his on-base percentage to .416. I recently broke down how his response to constantly nibbling pitchers—tightening up his plate discipline—has contributed to the surge, as his chase rate has dropped while his zone rate has basically remained unchanged.

Or, if you prefer plain ol' English: He's stopped chasing bad pitches.

That alone is conducive to good power hitting, as it's easier to drive the ball consistently when the overwhelming majority of your swings are at pitches that are good to hit. But when it comes to actually driving the ball, that's where Harper is quietly undergoing another transformation.

The best way to hit for power is to get the ball in the air. Ground balls don't often go for extra-base hits, after all, so it's not uncommon to see a player's slugging percentage rise as his ground-ball rate dips.

Which brings us to some less-than-coincidental data for Harper. According to FanGraphs, his rise in slugging percentage is indeed correlating with a drop in ground balls (GB%), resulting in more power-friendly line drives (LD%) and fly balls (FB%):

Season	SLUG	GB%	LD%	FB%
2012	.477	44.6	22.5	32.9
2013	.486	46.7	19.9	33.4
2014	.423	43.6	21.8	34.6
2015	.561	37.9	24.1	37.9

Beyond just getting the ball in the air, the other thing a hitter can do to boost his power potential is simply hit the ball hard.

More than anything else, this is the one thing that never figured to be a problem for Harper. His power was a legend worthy of Sports Illustrated when he was only 16 years old, and he was routinely rated as having 80-grade power when he was coming up through the prospect ranks.

But this is looking like the first year of Harper's career in which hard-hit balls are going to be a regular occurrence rather than occasional.

At the start of play on Wednesday, FanGraphs had Harper's hard-hit rate at 33.9 percent. That was just shy of the career-high 35.6 percent he posted in 2013, but his 2015 hard-hit rate is surely going to rise as a result of his three-homer outburst. It'll be on its way to a new career high.

Meanwhile, Harper also came into Wednesday's action averaging 316.1 feet on his fly balls, according to BaseballHeatMaps.com. This is quite the step up after averaging below 300 feet in 2012, 2013 and 2014, and it doesn't yet take these distances into account:

All told, Harper's early-season surge isn't that hard to explain. He's doing himself a favor by putting together good at-bats, and he's also lifting the ball in the air and simply letting his natural raw power do the rest. We shouldn't be surprised that he's looking like the hitter he was long projected to be.

Now, I think I know what you might be thinking: Haven't we seen this movie before?

Sort of. Back in 2013, Harper got off to an absurd start by hitting .344 with a 1.150 OPS and nine home runs in the season's first month. That performance looks even better than what Harper's done in the first month of 2015, so why should we be geeking out about what he's done for us lately?

Well, mainly because the qualities that have factored into Harper's hot 2015 start were only just starting to develop in 2013.

We can't compare average batted-ball distances, but we can compare approach and batted-ball types. And when we do that, we see that Harper wasn't as disciplined or getting the ball in the air in the first month of 2013 like he has been in the first month of 2015:

Split	Swing%	Chase%	GB%	LD%	FB%
April 2013	51.7	33.9	50.0	16.7	33.3
2015	43.9	28.6	37.9	24.1	37.9

It was bad health that brought Harper's hot start to 2013 to a screeching halt, as a couple of collisions with outfield walls banged him up and turned him into a shell of himself. But even if those collisions hadn't happened, it's likely his hot start would have flamed out on its own. He didn't have the approach to sustain it.

That shouldn't be the case this year. Harper always had the goods to turn himself into a legitimately great power hitter. According to all the evidence in front of us, that's what he's done.

And yes, it is worth repeating that he's still only 22 years old.

That makes him younger than everyone else in the National League except Addison Russell and Dilson Herrera. He's younger than Kris Bryant, everyone's favorite rookie phenom. And as Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times notes, Harper is also younger than the current NL Rookie of the Year favorite:

So, remember that poll that ESPN conducted before the start of the season? You know, the one in which Harper was a runaway winner in the "most overrated" category?

We can already look back at that and laugh now. In a few months, odds are we'll be laughing even harder.

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

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