Bryce Harper isn’t the issue with the Phillies’ batting order. They are lopsided, whether he hits first, second or third

Bryce Harper has earned the right to call his spot. Let’s be clear about that. As he goes, so go the Phillies. That’s been the case throughout Harper’s first six seasons here, and it will continue to be the case in 2025. If Harper is adamant about hitting third in the lineup, then third is where he should hit.

“Obviously,” Harper said last week in Clearwater, Fla., “I’m a three-hole hitter, and I have been.”

That said, it sure would be nice if it wasn’t so obvious. Because the Phillies could really use him in the two-hole.

A couple of points before we get too deep into the weeds.

1) Lineup construction is the low-hanging fruit of baseball discourse. The illusion of control, etc. You can’t change the players. You can change the order of them. It is a coping mechanism, really. The first stage of grief for fans wrestling with a team’s imperfections. The reality is that lineup construction has a negligible impact on wins and losses. So say the people who study this stuff.

2) Harper’s attachment to batting third is not unqualified.

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“Whenever they’ve told me to hit two or four, I’ve done that in the past,” he said. “I want to win. So I don’t care what it takes.”

Then again, note the framing of those comments: an impersonal, almighty “they” dictating orders that a good soldier must follow.

I’m not implying any selfishness here. Harper’s attachment to the three-hole is not rooted in ego or vanity. Long gone are the days when the two-hole was viewed as the exclusive domain of move-‘em-over slap hitters like Placido Polanco. According to the contemporary understanding of the game, backed by enough numbers to crash a spreadsheet, a team’s best hitter is best off batting second.

The list of recent league MVPs who spent significant time in the two-hole includes Shohei Ohtani (2024), Paul Goldschmidt (2022), Freddie Freeman (2020), and Christian Yelich (2018). These days, the top of the order is just as much the domain of the elite as the middle.

Harper’s preference for the three-hole is grounded in pragmatism.

“I like to see pitches before I hit,” Harper said. “Seeing what guys are going to do.”

That makes a ton of sense. Batting third at the start of a game, a hitter has the benefit of watching an opposing pitcher face two batters before he steps into the box. Harper said that, during his time with the Nationals, he loved hitting behind Jayson Werth, the former Phillies outfielder who was notorious for seeing a lot of pitches.

“But, at the end of the day, you only lead off or hit second once,” Harper said.

It’s a point that Rob Thomson is going to need to emphasize to his star if the Phillies manager is serious about reconfiguring his lineup for 2025. In order to move Kyle Schwarber out of the leadoff spot, where he has thrived over the last two seasons, Thomson needs Harper to hit somewhere other than fourth.

It doesn’t make sense to move Harper down to fourth. Although he has hit there in the past, including the 2022 postseason, the further down in the order a player hits, the fewer plate appearances he will see over the course of a season. Frankly, using that logic, the best place for Harper to hit is at the top of the order. The Dodgers did it with Ohtani last season. It worked out OK.

Such a lineup would look like this:

1) Bryce Harper, 1B (L)

2) Trea Turner, SS (R)

3) Kyle Schwarber, DH (L)

4) Alec Bohm, 3B (R)

5) Max Kepler, LF (L)

6) J.T. Realmuto, C (R)

7) Bryson Stott, 2B (L)

8) Nick Castellanos, RF (R)

9) Brandon Marsh, CF (L)

There are a few glaring issues, of course. While the top three look ideal, the bottom two-thirds of the order involve a number of sacrifices to maintain balance. For instance, you’d want a pitcher to be worried about somebody other than Kepler when pitching to the uber-aggressive Bohm, in an ideal world. You’d also prefer somebody other than a weak lefty-on-lefty hitter in the nine-hole in front of Harper.

Which is why the Phillies’ ideal non-Schwarber lineup might look something like this:

1) Trea Turner (R)

2) Bryce Harper (L)

3) Alec Bohm (R)

4) Kyle Schwarber (L)

5) J.T. Realmuto (R)

6) Max Kepler (L)

7) Nick Castellanos (R)

8) Brandon Marsh (L)

9) Bryson Stott (L)

Or, maybe not.

The reality is that there is no ideal lineup for a team that is constructed like the Phillies. Which is why so many people crinkled their foreheads when Dave Dombrowski decided to spend $10 million on the left-handed-hitting Kepler to play left field. The conundrum only thickened over the weekend when Weston Wilson suffered an oblique injury that is expected to sideline him beyond Opening Day. Wilson is/was the most obvious candidate to serve as a right-handed counterpart to Kepler in left.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Phillies bring in another right-handed corner outfield bat before the end of spring training. You can talk yourself in circles trying to come up with an ideal batting order. But therein lies the biggest point of them all. There are no ideal batting orders on unideal teams.