wonder if they are gonna try to get him to have a more relaxed batting stance. the one he has seems kinda weird.

That ball's going to Cooperstown.

He didn't keep it. He said he could careless about a spring training hit.

Greear,

His stance/swing are phenomenal.

Obvious hitch detected.

they're not ****in with it because he's shown the ability to get into proper hitting position even with a slight hitch. If he starts struggling that'll be the first thing to go probably

A verb works better here than an adjective.

Anyway who knows if he'll be able to maintain his right leg motion at this level. I think coaches try to **** with a hitter's swing at every level except for MLB. If you can make it to the MLB with an abnormal looking swing (not that Harper's is close to "****ed up") and still hit (Bagwell, etc.) the stakes are too high to mess with it.

It's pretty incredible that Harper gets his front foot down in time/in place and knee locked in time, as well as hands through the zone so fast and manages to be consistent and times it all so well. Maybe he sees the ball in slo-mo???

I'm pretty care less about my spelling, but really.. I couldn't carelesss

Harper went 0-1 in yesterday's game with a walk.

Overall ST stats, 1-5, BB. 2 K's. I wish they was video of his other AB's besides his 1st game.

.200 in spring training? scrub.

Ive seen 5 or so ab's of him in the afl, and spring training so far..
He seems to have very little discipline and likes to take a good hack at pretty much every pitch...
But when pitchers leave pitches in the middle of the plate, kablowie...

Pretty cool article. I think you're overstating it when you say, "only 2 got to the big time." You refer to Garnett and James. I'd argue that Rick Mount, being hyped as a HSer and later being drafted #1 overall after 4 years at Purdue "made it." Also, Bruce Hardy having an 11-year career as a WR in the NFL is pretty good. Carpenter played 14 years in the NHL including becoming the first US-born player to get 50 goals in a season. Phillips made the Gymnastics HoF (seems undeserved given the rest of her write-up). These kinds of results for hyped high school athletes seem pretty good. Also factor in the additional addition and pressure they get from this early attention.

As for Harper, you're just ignorant of baseball's contract rules if you think there's any chance Harper will play in the majors before June. I also wonder about the value of bringing him up this year instead of June '12 considering the usual career arc of a power hitter. Get him bigger, better, stronger at AAA while letting him see some real pitching for the 1st time in his life. I'm also a little ignorant of MLB contract rules, after how many MLB games does his clock start?

I wonder how many non-phenoms from High School made it as a pro.

Here is a link from today where you can see his 1st Spring Training hit. Its later on in the video.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?...k_was&c_id=was

one of the things I noticed from that video is LOL umps for giving the pitcher that much off the plate on a breaking pitch.

players just need to accumulate 6 years of mlb service time before they can become free agents afaik.

there's also the rule 5 draft where you have to put a drafted player w/ 4 or 5 years in the minors (depends in the age they were drafted i think) on your mlb roster or risk losing him to another team. and after that you have options about moving him up and down between the minors and the majors but i am unclear on how this stuff affects service time.

it's all very confusing.