Phillies' Bryce Harper Wins National League MVP Award

PHILADLEPHIA, PA — After one of the greatest single offensive seasons in Philadelphia Phillies history, slugger Bryce Harper has been named the 2021 Most Valuable Player in the National League.

Harper, now 29, beat out a pair of superstar youngsters for the award: 23-year-old Juan Soto of the Washington Nationals and 22-year-old Fernando Tatis Jr. of the San Diego Padres. It is Harper's second career MVP award after taking home the trophy in 2015, putting him on a clear trajectory to the Hall of Fame with a decade left on his contract with the Phillies.

In the moments after the winner was announced on MLB Network, an emotional Harper credited both his team and Philadelphia fans for keeping him strong and healthy throughout the year.

"I love my team, I love the city of Philadelphia," Harper said through tears, as he thanked family members, teammates, and coaches by name. "I'm so grateful to be able to know I signed in the right place."

Harper's stunning 2021 saw him lead all of baseball in multiple categories, including a 1.044 OPS (a statistic combining on-base percentage and slugging percentage), a .615 slugging percentage, and 42 doubles. He was near the top of the sport in several other categories, batting .309 with a .429 on-base percentage, along with 35 home runs and 13 stolen bases.

Voters gave Harper a large margin of victory, as he earned 17 first place votes to Soto's 6 and Tatis Jr.'s 2. His overall score was 348. Soto finished second with 274, and Tatis third with 244.

The win comes in year three of Harper's 13-year, $330 million contract he signed with the Phillies in 2019, at the time the largest in North American sports history. And it silences legions of doubters who were skeptical he was worth it.

The mammoth year was despite Harper taking a 97 mile-per-hour fastball off the face in April, knocking him out of action for days. He also called missing the All Star team a "blessing in disguise," as it gave him several days to rest and recover heading into the second half. The second half was when Harper did the bulk of his damage, running off a string of several months as the game's hottest hitter.

Harper is the first Phillies MVP winner since 2007, when the award went to franchise icon Jimmy Rollins. Ryan Howard won it the year before in 2006.

Harper had already won the 2021 Hank Aaron Award (best offensive player in the league), and Silver Slugger Award (best hitter at his position). The presenter of the award, announced days ago, was Phillies Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt. So Harper's win hardly comes as a surprise.

Heralded since his early teenage years as a phenom, Harper broke onto the baseball scene in dramatic fashion at age 19. Though he was just 22 when he won his first MVP with another historic season, he quickly became seen as "overrated" after his record contract. And with the emergence of younger superstars like Tatis Jr., Ronald Acuna Jr., and Soto, Harper slowly faded from the spotlight. The Phillies relative struggles surely contributed to this, as Harper's spectacular, if not quite MVP-level numbers in 2019 and 2020 came in under the radar.

It wasn't until midseason 2021, when Harper's firestorm was in full swing, that the baseball world finally took notice of something that had been true for months, if not years: Harper had somehow become the most overlooked and underrated superstar in the sport.

The constant praise Harper heaps on the Phillies, his teammates, and the city should not be overlooked. Despite his Herculean performance, the Phillies struggled badly in the final weeks of the season. They were finally eliminated from contention in their next to last series, after being swept by the eventual World Series champion Atlanta Braves. Regardless, Harper reiterated during Thursday's award's ceremony that he is proud to be a Phillie; his contract includes a no-trade clause. He's not going anywhere, and that's just how he wants it.

The Phillies narrowly missed out on taking home both the MVP and Cy Young awards in 2021, as their ace pitcher Zack Wheeler fell just a few votes short of winning the Cy Young Wednesday night.

Harper's career accolades now include two MVP awards, a Rookie of the Year Award, six All-Star team selections, and two Silver Sluggers. Heading into his age 29 season, Harper already has lifetime numbers of 267 home runs, 1,273 hits, and 111 stolen bases.

Though Harper is the third different Phillie to win MVP in the last 15 years — no team has more winners in that stretch — he's just the sixth in franchise history, following Rollins, Howard, Schmidt (1980, 1981, and 1986), Jim Konstanty (1950), and Chuck Klein (1932).