In the wake of Bryce Harper’s Tommy John surgery, NickSelbe finds one silver lining for the Phillies in Wednesday's bad news: They've been through this before—sort of ...
It was late June when Harper suffered a fractured thumb after being hit by a pitch, causing him to miss two months and 52 games on the injured list. This was roughly six weeks after an MRI revealed a tear in his right UCL, which forced him into permanent designated hitter duties.
After initial reports earmarked Harper’s return for mid-May, the team revealed that the actual expectation is for him to be back by the All-Star break as the team’s DH. That’s a three-and-a-half month absence for one of the game’s premier hitters, and puts the team in a more precarious position in regards to patching together a stout enough lineup in the interim.
For the Phillies to withstand three-plus months without Harper, he’ll have to be. Because while Philadelphia stayed afloat—and eventually surged up the standings—in 2022 as Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos made a combined 260 defensive starts, they did so largely with Harper’s bat still in the lineup to help offset their defensive shortcomings. Now, he won’t be there at all , making the margin of error that much slimmer, and Marsh’s defensive contributions that much more vital.
In his first season of a five-year, $100 million contract, Castellanos’s production cratered. He launched just 13 homers, his fewest since his rookie year, while posting career lows in OPS+ , isolated power and walk rate . A quick glance at his Statcast page shows than you’d like to see, and he’ll be in his age-31 season in 2023.
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