Now that Bryce Harper's thumb issue is behind him, drafters may continue taking him too early.
The Nationals' stud youngster was supposed to fall to the fourth round this year and be a nice sleeper pick there, not leap up to the fringes of the second. I like Harper -- and I can back it up with baseball history -- but there's a little bit of downside that needs to be recognized here: He only hit .243 in his short Triple-A stint, with a .690 OPS. Plus, for all Mike Trout did last year, there aren't a ton of data sets that definitively prove a 20-year-old deserves that "surefire" tag.
I don't necessarily agree with these arguments, but they should at least be presented by someone, right?
Again, I like Harper -- i think he'll hit .300 with a possible 40/40 campaign. And I know that translates to a first-round pick. But there should be plenty of people out there tempering expectations a little bit, and they don't seem to exist. Instead, his price just gets driven up, and he loses that exciting sleeper gambit that would have been a fun angle in 2013.