PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Phillies star Bryce Harper doesn’t want the 97-mph Blake Snell heater, which cracked the bone of his left thumb, to be the last moment of his 2022 season.
Speaking to the media for the first time since his thumb surgery, Harper assured that we haven’t seen the last of him.
“I’ll be back,” he said via NBC Sports Philadelphia. “I don’t want to hope or think about anything. I just want to go day by day and be back when I can. Whenever I feel healthy, whenever that is, to go help this team win.”
Harper had three pins inserted in his thumb.
“If I was not a baseball player and I just worked a normal job or anything like that, then I probably wouldn’t have pins in it,” he noted. “I would just let it heal the way it needed to.”
Harper was having another sensational MVP-caliber season, though the Phils have not tapered off since his injury. They are 6-3 since the fracture — including the game during which it happened. They are 22-9 since June 1 and 21-9 under interim manager Rob Thomson.
Left fielder Kyle Schwarber has been an absolute beast with 25 home runs through 81 games — the exact midway point of the season. And with Tuesday’s 11-0 win over the Nationals, combined with the Cardinals losing to the Braves, the Phillies jumped the Cards by a percentage point into the third and final National League wild card.
They are neck and neck at this point with St. Louis in the playoff picture.
“That’s always been the goal,” Thomson said. “But we do have a long way to go, and it’s really one game, one series at a time, and you just gotta keep going.”
For the Phils’ sake, it would do wonders to keep going and remain in the postseason conversation so they will be there whenever Harper returns.
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