Washington Nationals slugger Bryce Harper leads National League All-Star returns for the fifth straight week and in the process has broken the all-time record for an NL player.
Harper, 22, shattered a mark set by San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey in 2012, per Aaron Dodson of the Washington Post. His 9,224,370 votes have surpassed Posey’s total by more than 1.6 million, and Harper’s tally will continue to rise until voting closes July 2. No other National League player has even seven million votes in the latest returns.
In his fourth MLB season, Harper has finally started realizing the prodigious talent that made him one of the most highly touted prospects in history. He’s already set a career high in home runs (24), is two away from matching his previous mark in runs batted in and is on pace for one of the highest wins above replacement numbers of the modern era.
“I think people forget he’s 22 years old,” Nationals owner Mark Lerner recently said, per Scott Allen of the Washington Post. “He’s younger than [Cubs rookie] Kris Bryant and others that have just come up, that are going to be the next great ones. Bryce is going to continue to get better and better. We just gotta watch the journey because it’s going to be an amazing one.”
ESPN Stats & Info highlighted where Harper stands all-time among players his age:
If voting results hold, three St. Louis Cardinals (Matt Carpenter, Jhonny Peralta and Matt Holliday) and a number of other high-profile stars will join Harper on the NL squad. The Miami Marlins are the only team other than St. Louis that would have multiple All-Star starters, with second baseman Dee Gordon and outfielder Giancarlo Stanton looking like locks. Stanton is also perhaps Harper’s best competition for the NL MVP trophy.
Whereas eager Kansas City fans hoping for an all-Royals affair have hijacked the American League ballot, the NL roster is much more typical. The only outlier is Giants outfielder Nori Aoki, who may be able to thank his fourth-place standing in the NL outfield race to having played in Kansas City last year.
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