I have some questions about the handling of Bryce Harper’s wrist injury

I am not one to question a player’s toughness. Lord knows that baseball players endure more health related issues throughout a season that we will likely never know about, but that they play through anyway.

Aches, sprains, tightness, all of these issues are probably on the daily plate of the athletic training staff that they handle with exceptional care and diligence. We’ve seen that the team has stayed relatively healthy through these last few seasons of playoff appearances and they should be commended for it, perhaps even given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to making decisions about the players themselves.

But this last one with Bryce Harper – I have some questions.

Let’s look at a few things. First, we have the hit by pitch by Spencer Strider.

This hit by pitch was enough that Harper was in need of having to miss the next five games on the team’s schedule. MLB’s official rules tell us that players can be placed on the injured list for ten days with the team then being able to bring up a replacement for that injured player if they think that player needs some time off to recover with proper treatment. The Phillies, together as a group with Harper likely having some say, decided that an injured list stint wasn’t necessary.

“Obviously, [I’m] getting treatment and things like that. I’m not sure when I’m going to play again.”

Is a stint on the injured list possible?

“I hope not,” Harper said. “At this point, it’s going to be three games today — so again, we’re super day by day, but I don’t think so.”

Added manager Rob Thomson: “I don’t think so, but we’ll just have to see.”

These quotes were taken on May 30th, three days after Harper was hit. From that quote, one would make the assumption that he wasn’t coming back for the series against Milwaukee and he, in fact, did not. With the team’s off day on the Monday following being swept by the Brewers, they wouldn’t play again until this past Tuesday, a full week that the team decided to play without the benefit of a 13th position player on the roster.

That even included a doubleheader in which a position player could have given someone a game off. They split that doubleheader, so maybe it didn’t matter too much then, but would it have mattered a few days later, someone maybe needing a day off? We can’t know that.

But getting back to this issue and my first question comes up: why did the team willingly play down a man instead of just telling Harper to sit out a few more games? Granted, that player that would have come up likely wouldn’t have been much better than what they had on the bench already, but since it would have been Otto Kemp, wouldn’t using him to try and ride his hot streak have made more sense than using no one at all?

This question comes into play this weekend with Harper now needing a stint on the injured list with a wrist issue, an issue that was apparently a problem for the majority of the season with Harper last year. If you listen to what Harper was saying about the injury, this isn’t something that just popped up in Toronto.

“It’s been long enough to where it’s gotten to the point where I can’t really function on a baseball field or hit a baseball or anything like that,” Harper said. “So, it’s just a good time for me to take some time and get it right…

[i]t’s tough. Obviously, I want to be out there. It’s frustrating,” Harper said. “I never want to not be playing, so it’s definitely frustrating for me. But it just wasn’t good for me to keep going out there.

“… It was definitely a hard decision for me. I’ve played through pain in my career. I did it last year, I did it for most of this year. But I just don’t want to do it anymore.”

It’s fine that Harper wants to take care of it now, admirable even. The season still has quite a few games left and from the looks of how the National League is shaping up, the August and September months look like they will be a dogfight for both the division crown or the wild card spots, whichever the Phillies are likely to use to make the playoff rounds.

But here comes my second question: why, if this has been an issue all season, did the team not use the hit by pitch injury as an excuse to get a headstart on this time needed to get Harper’s wrist healed? Why did they wait until now?

The team has a frustrating trend of letting seemingly minor injuries set for a few days before ultimately deciding that a stint on the injured list is necessary. The delay in doing so makes it seem that they are giving the player a say in how the course should be handled, which is interesting considering how important Harper is to the franchise. We’ve seen that there is a noticeable lack of energy around the team when he is not in the lineup, so his importance should not be understated.

So if all the games are going to matter moving forward, why did they let this happen? It’s not that those extra days would have magically healed Harper’s wrist. From the sounds of it, this is an injury that is going to take some time to heal. He’ll need more than just a few days before he’s able to get right. Even if he were to get better relatively quickly, since they waited so long to put him on the injured list, now he isn’t able to return until June 16 at the earliest. If it lingers even further, his needing a rehab stint isn’t off the table either.

It’s just odd that this is the timeline the team chose to use to get to this point. We won’t know all the specifics of course and nor should we. There are laws to protect against that information being made public. But the team does have a duty to try and put their best roster forward on any given day. It’s confusing to me that if a player is as injured as Harper is, they wouldn’t try and utilize the injured list to make their roster better.

Confounding even.

They know what’s best for the situation. They’re the professionals. It’s still alright for people to question the decision making, even if those questions are missing some of the variables. Let’s just hope that the course of action the team chose is the best course for Harper and for the team.