The Math on the possibility of a NL Triple Crown for Bryce Harper on 9/6/15

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Stephen G. "Ghost" Mears

Here is a fun exercise on the great offensive season Bryce Harper is having and talk about the history of the Triple Crown.  The last NL Triple Crown winner was Joe “Ducky” Medwick 78 years ago for the St Louis Cardinals in 1937 had 31 HRs, 154 RBIs and a .374 BA.   Could Bryce Harper join American Pharoah as a dual 2015 Triple Crown?

Here is Bryce Harper’s numbers:

  1. 34 HRs
  2. 83 RBIs
  3. .339 BA
  4. 26 games remaining

Perfect timing for this Tweet from MLB at 11:07AM today……

Here is the BA leaders:

  1. Bryce Harper .339
  2. Dee Gordon .329
  3. Buster Posey .326
  4. Paul Goldschmidt .321

Here is the HR leaders:

  1. Nolan Arenado 36
  2. Carlos Gonzalez 36
  3. Bryce Harper 34

Here is the RBI leaders:

  1. Nolan Arenado 105
  2. Paul Goldschmidt 97
  3. Matt Kemp 89
  4. Kris Bryant 86
  5. Carlos Gonzalez 86
  6. Andrew McCutcheon 85
  7. Bryce Harper 83

While we’re at it, let’s do a non-Triple Crown stat of OPS:

  1. Bryce Harper 1.122
  2. Joey Votto 1.027
  3. Paul Goldschmidt .992

Let’s also do WAR (wins above replacements) for all of MLB:

  1. Bryce Harper 8.6
  2. Josh Donaldson 7.6
  3. Paul Goldschmidt 7.5
  4. Mike Trout 7.5

Our opinion is that Bryce looks like he can win the Batting Crown and he is 2 HRs from the Home Crown leaders making the HR lead reachable, but there would have to be an explosion of RBIs to leapfrog 6 players to win the RBI crown.  Bryce would most likely have to hit 40 to 45 RBIs in 26 games to win the RBI crown as the winner of the NL RBI crown will be in the 120’s by our projection.

The MVP is a more likely crown for Bryce Harper as the SABR and more conventional stats all favor Harper with the exception of RBIs.

Just for some fun, look at this FanGraphs current statline as of 9/6/15 and the pre-season projections for Bryce (click on the chart to view larger):

Screengrab from FanGraphs. All applicable rights are to the projection services named.

Screengrab from FanGraphs. All rights to this information is the property of FanGraphs and the projection services named. www.FanGraphs.com

Bryce by the way, cares most about 1 thing and that is team wins which is 71 on 9/6/15.

This is how Bryce celebrated tonight with 5 wins in a row and his #34 HR like a kid in Little League would……with ice cream!

https://instagram.com/p/7T11fXAIaX/

 

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