If you’ve lost track of Bryce Harper, here’s an update

We are as excited about Bryce Harper as the next guy, unless that guy is Dave Cameron. We like Cameron’s writing quite a bit. When we’re ready to jump off a bridge because Jay Bruce isn’t hitting–Cameron is the voice of reason–he tells us that due to the data he’s reviewed and the abstract he has looked at, Bruce is going to be alright and a pretty darn good player for our Redlegs. He’s been right so far.

Cameron, like us; loves prospects. He writes for FanGraphs and the USS Mariner. He’s the man. Here’s what he had to say about Bryce Harper today:

And yet, despite all the hype, I’m still not sure we’re accurately appreciating just how good this kid really could be. He’s 18 years old, playing in his first professional season at a time when he should be getting ready to graduate from high school, and he’s hitting .396/.472/.712. That’s his line after last night’s 4 for 5 performance – one which included a grand slam, his eighth home run of the season.

He’s eighteen years old. Sure, it’s only 111 at-bats, but he could go into a slump of epic proportions and still match the numbers put up by some of the best age-18 seasons of all time.

So to sum it up, this kid is good. Like, really, really good. We get daily Google hits each day asking things like ‘why is Bryce Harper such a dick’ along with ‘Bryce Harper’s teammates think he is a dick’. There’s probably some levity to it. But we don’t care. We’re like Dave Cameron, picking pretty flowers, forming a nice boquet for the day he’s ready to accept it; and waiting for the day we can watch him hit like crazy at the Major League level.

We’ve just started following the Minor Leagues in the last few years, and this is one of the most impressive displays of something we’ve ever seen. Right up there with Jay Bruce end of 2007 and beginning of 2008 when the Reds wouldn’t call him up because they were thinking about their pocketbook, foolishly in Bruce’s case because he wasn’t tough to extend long-term anyways.