Bryce Harper’s pre-pitch routine has to change, but even he doesn’t know what it will look like yet

Harper’s lengthy pre-at-bat routine won’t fly anymore with the pitch clock. It will be just another adjustment he will have to make in his return.

Bryce Harper will have to speed up his process at the plate with the addition of the pitch clock this season.Read moreYong Kim / Staff Photographer

by Alex Coffey

Published April 26, 2023, 2:46 p.m. ET

In 2022, before the age of the pitch clock, Bryce Harper would dust his bat with rosin, slowly walk up to the plate, tap it against both feet, step into the box, shuffle some dirt around, step on the outside corner of the box, do a wiggle, brush some dirt on his hands, and step back into the box.

It was one of the more intricate pre-at-bat routines in the game. Baseball Savant says, on average, it took the Phillies star 20.5 seconds to do this with the bases empty last season.

That will not play in 2023. A 30-second pitch clock begins to wind down the moment the pitcher receives the ball from the catcher for each new hitter. Between pitches, there is a 15-second timer with the bases empty and a 20-second timer with runners on. Hitters must be in the box, facing the pitcher, by the eight-second mark, or an automatic strike is called. Harper took more than 30 seconds between the first and second pitches of the at-bat when he hit his historic go-ahead two-run homer in the eighth inning of Game 5 of the National League Championship Series against San Diego last year. In fact, all seven pitches of that at-bat clocked in at over 20 seconds, which would have resulted in another violation, because there was a runner on base.

Harper, who is working his way back from Tommy John elbow surgery, knows he will encounter challenges this season. He won’t go on a minor league rehab assignment, which means he’ll be facing big-league pitching right away. He will play first base at some point over the next few months, a position he’s only played twice in his 11-year career. But he will also have to shed a hitting routine that he’s developed over the past few seasons and create something entirely new.

Harper has recently started working with the pitch clock while he takes live at-bats. He’s been toying around with different ideas, but doesn’t think he’ll have a routine in place until he gets into live game situations. He knows he’ll have to cut some things out, most notably, the wiggle. Harper started doing it in 2021, after he was hit in the face by a Génesis Cabrera fastball in April.

“I had to keep my mind off a pitcher trying to come up and hit me in the face again,” Harper said. “I had to get that out of there, knowing that not everyone is going to hit me in the face. It was because of that.

“I’m not going to be able to do it anymore, so I’ll just have to figure out what I’m going to do.”

That will take some time, and unlike his teammates, who had the benefit of spring training with the pitch clock, Harper will have to adjust on the fly. Hitting coach Kevin Long said he prefers it that way.

“I don’t know what it’s going to look like,” Long said of Harper’s routine. “And I don’t think he does, either. He doesn’t pre-plan this stuff and it’s really not good to try to emulate stuff with him. He’s more of an on-the-fly kind of guy. It’ll come to him in the moment. That’s the way I look at it.

“You just start doing things and it becomes habitual before you know it. You take 700 at-bats and you’re seeing 2,500 pitches and you just start to create these habits. His is going to change. It’s not going to be the same routine he had. He can’t. It’s too long.”

Long anticipates that Harper will get some violations, but he is not too concerned about it. Most, if not all, of his hitters have had to adjust and have gotten charged with a strike or two.

“Is he going to get a violation? Yes, he’s going to get a violation,” Long said. “Just like pretty much every guy has. But he’ll figure it out. He’ll use his timeouts, I’m sure, probably once an at-bat for a while. But I notice a lot of guys are starting to get a feel for that. Just as he’s coming back from an injury and figuring all that out, he’s going to have to figure this out, too.”