With the bat and the glove, Bryce Harper continues to own Opening Day
By
Chris Landers
For 364 days out of the year, Bryce Harper is an incredibly good baseball player -- a player who broke into the Major Leagues before he could legally buy a drink and won NL MVP at the ripe old age of 22. On Opening Day, however, he morphs from "incredibly good" to "unbelievably, stupendously, physics-defyingly good": Entering 2017, Harper had played in four Opening Day games ... and homered in three of them, posting a tidy 1.700 OPS (!) Someone probably should have shared this information with Christian Yelich before he lined one to right field during the Nats' Opening Day matchup with the Marlins on Monday:
Despite all that superlative defense, however, the Nationals still trailed, 2-0, heading into the bottom of the sixth. So, naturally, Bryce got the offense going with a dinger:
Washington went on to win, 4-2 -- because when you've got a human home-run machine on your side, the odds are in your favor.