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Originally Posted by sbfinley
The knock on him his first two years was that he continually tried to make plays when nothing was there and would nick himself up. He failed to run one ball out in August of a disappointing season which led to a brawl with one of the biggest knuckleheads in the game. And the reason baseball is on the uptick is because it has the greatest influx of young talent the game has seen since the 1950's. Harper is at the top of the list and arguably one of the three most important players in the game. I'm all for the "un-written rules" debate and personally feel the game could use a little of both sides of the argument, but to slam Harper for a lack of hustle implies you haven't watched him at all.
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I must have watched him a lot more than you, or you would have seen what I have. The Papelbon incident was one of many like that, at bat and in the field. He hustles like crazy when he feels like it, but will also fail to run out a ground ball or fly ball, or fail to come in quickly to field a hit in the outfield, and some of them have cost the team bases in close games. This attitude started spreading among the Nationals, and I saw both Escobar and Ramos either fail to run out fly balls or go into a home run trot on balls that hit the wall and stayed in play. He won the MVP on stats, but he actually might have been the least valuable player in terms of team unity and cohesion. Harper's an enormous talent, but he seems to consider himself above the game. Most Nats fans are thrilled to have such an exciting young talent on their team, but I'd rather win.