On Ronald Acuña Jr.’s injury, Bryce Harper’s greatness, and the biggest reason to believe in the Phillies

This was going to be a column about Bryce Harper’s greatness, about the Thing that differentiates him from so many others to whom we ascribe that characteristic, about the way that Thing has manifested itself in the team that surrounds him. But, these being the 2024 Phillies, something else broke in their favor before I could finish writing.

The three scariest words in sports are noncontact knee injury. Ronald Acuña Jr. suffered one on Sunday afternoon. The Braves star tried to slam on the brakes after breaking for third base on a stolen-base attempt. His left leg gave out and he crumpled to the dirt. The early official word said merely that he had been removed from the game due to knee soreness. But, as you can see in the video of the play below, it did not look good.

Sure enough, on Sunday night, an MRI revealed a complete tear of his left anterior cruciate ligament, which requires season-ending surgery. Less than two months after losing ace Spencer Strider to an elbow injury, the Braves will now attempt to chase down the Phillies without the defending NL MVP, their unquestioned driving force.

Any time something like this happens, there is a natural impulse to react. It isn’t necessarily the heartless thing that many scolds portend it to be. It is totally within the realm of human capability to simultaneously: 1) Feel empathy for a great player on a rival team who suffers an injury; 2) Feel disappointment that said team will not be playing at full strength; 3) Wonder what it means for one’s own team.

In Acuña’s case, all three thoughts are unavoidable. He is unquestionably one of the small handful of players who single-handedly make a game worth watching. The defending MVP, he of the 41 home runs and 73 steals and 1.012 OPS last year, Acuña plays the game with a swagger and a flair that is both intoxicating and (intoxicatingly) maddening to witness. As such, he is a formative part of what the Phillies have become. Every good story needs an antagonist that makes the reader/viewer care about the battle being waged.

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The Phillies would not have accomplished what they accomplished without Acuña. Not in a holistic sense. They would have accomplished something, sure. Advancing to the World Series and then another NLCS is an accomplishment. But would it have meant as much if they hadn’t done it by beating the big, bad Acuña-led Braves?

So, yes, it is a story.

But it is last year’s story.

And the year before that.

This year? The story is different. The Phillies have positioned themselves to write it all their own. The Braves are no longer a fixation, no longer a behemoth susceptible only to acts of God. They are one of a number of teams that have spent the last two months watching the Phillies establish themselves as the class of the National League.

I hope I’m articulating my thought clearly enough. I’m not diminishing anything about Acuña, or his worthiness, and I’m certainly not downplaying the significance of any injury. I’m simply pointing out the transition the Phillies have made over this last month or so. As good as Acuña is, as much as he means to the Braves, his presence or absence is irrelevant to the Phillies right now.

That is how it feels when you spend the first two months of the season playing at a 114-win pace and build a seven-game lead in the division. When something happens behind you, it happens out of sight, because you are looking forward.

Back to Harper.

He is the reason the Phillies enjoy their present sight lines. He is why they are where they are. You saw it on Saturday night in Colorado: two outs, top of the ninth, runners in scoring position, Phillies having just taken a 4-3 lead. He’d been ejected the night before, over a trifling matter, an incident that did not do any favors for umpire image consultants. He did what we have come to expect him to do: hit a home run that seals a game.

Expectations are the true measure of greatness. When Tom Brady stepped onto the field with a chance at a game-winning drive, you expected a certain outcome. When Michael Jordan had the ball in his hands on the elbow in a postseason game, you expected a certain outcome. Players like that are exceedingly rare, separate from many of those who may stake a legitimate claim to being great. They are the 1% of the 1%. Harper is one of them.

He is on pace for one of his greatest seasons: 39 home runs, 125 RBIs, 97 runs. He entered Sunday with a .942 OPS. Give him strong consideration for a third career MVP.

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What really matters is the manner in which he does these things. At 16 years old, he made people believe that greatness was preordained. The same is true at 31. Rarely has a player delivered as consistently and crucially as Harper has done since he signed with the Phillies. You don’t need to spend much time around him to understand it. He exudes the confidence that comes when talent mixes with singular focus.

The rest of these Phillies are a talented, likable lot, the source of much of their visible personality. But they are able to be that way because of the guy at their center. The gravity he imparts on a clubhouse is more than enough for all.

It’s funny. Ever since Harper arrived in Philadelphia, he has acted and spoken as if the Phillies were destined to end up where they currently are. Never mind that they’d spent their entire modern history chasing the Braves, that their few blips of excellence were swamped by a century of mediocrity.

He is one of the rare ones who speaks and acts things into existence. He is the lead dog’s lead dog. Everything else is secondary.