Bryce Harper’s recovery and standout season after elbow surgery even surprised his physical therapist

For weeks, Bryce Harper’s every swing — at the air, off a tee, in batting practice, against a pitcher — got documented and analyzed. And then, suddenly, it stopped. Because once he returned from elbow surgery on May 2, beating the Phillies’ timetable by more than two months, everyone assumed Harper would be, well, Harper.

Tim Soder knew better.

It wasn’t that Soder doubted the star slugger. Quite the opposite. The Las Vegas physical therapist started treating Harper as a teenager and, in a 40-minute phone conversation last week, described him fondly as a “freak” no fewer than four times. If he had to lay odds on an athlete to make it back from Tommy John surgery in less than six months, his money was on Harper.

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But Soder also was among the last people to see Harper in March before he reported to spring training. He knew what Harper was able to do — and more notably, unable to do — in the gym last winter.

As much as anyone, then, he understands why, as the Phillies open a best-of-three wild-card series Tuesday night against the Marlins, Harper feels “fortunate” to have played 126 games in the regular season and considers his 21 homers and .900 OPS to be a “bonus.”

”Being healthy is different than being physically ready for major league baseball,” Soder said. “You and I are healthy. Let’s go play baseball. Yeah, Bryce was physically cleared to play, but no, he was not close to where he normally is at that point in the season. And we probably all kind of forgot that a little bit.”

Indeed, while Soder, like everyone, was floored by Harper’s 160-day sprint from the operating table to DHing for the Phillies at Dodger Stadium, he found what happened over the next 151 days to be even more eye-popping.

Harper batted .293/.401/.499 and ranked 10th in OPS among 133 players who qualified for the batting title. He had 29 doubles and 51 extra-base hits. He made 546 plate appearances and was 46% more productive than an average major-league hitter based on OPS+.

And he did it all despite being limited to “30 or 40% of what he normally would do” in the gym in the offseason, according to Soder’s estimation.

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“He’s stronger than most of us if all he does is sit on the couch,” Soder said. “But you take any athlete on the planet and say, ‘OK, this offseason you’re not going to train,’ I’m pretty sure the numbers are going to go down.

“I was shocked at how good his average was. If you’d have told me [in the offseason] that he hits .275 this year, I’d have said, take that right now. For him to be pushing .300 most of the year, I didn’t expect that.”

Not when Soder considers where Harper started after surgery on Nov. 23.

Initially, Harper could do only range-of-motion exercises to regain full extension in his right elbow. After a few weeks, he added 1- to 2-pound weights — “Stuff that’s a joke for him,” Soder said. Next up: strengthening the rotator cuff in the shoulder with 8-pound weights (Soder: “You’ve got pitchers that max out at like 5 pounds.”) And Harper did his usual Pilates to maintain core muscles.

But while Harper typically “goes for the biggest weights you’ve got in the building,” Soder said, much of his lifting routine was off limits for at least three months after surgery. No dumbbell presses. No dead lifts. He couldn’t even do certain lower-body exercises, such as Bulgarian split squats with his back leg elevated and 80-pound weights in each hand.

By March, when Harper left for the Phillies’ facility in Clearwater, Fla., he was doing lighter and less intense weight training than he would do in November or December of a typical offseason.

”He was not Bryce in the weight room,” Soder said.

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Like many players, Harper focuses less during the season on building strength than merely maintaining it. As Soder explained, the rigors of a 162-game schedule make it “too hard for guys to be in the weight room four or five days a week busting their [butt].”

If ever, then, that Harper was going to go a career-high 38 games and 165 plate appearances without a homer, this would be the season.

From May 26 through July 15, he didn’t go deep and had three homers at the All-Star break. When the outage began, Harper said he wasn’t worried about power. By July, he was reminding people that the Phillies didn’t expect him back before the All-Star break anyway.

“There’s a fatigue factor that I think set in, and when fatigue sets in, sometimes you change your swing,” manager Rob Thomson said. “He went from smothering the ball at one point to lofting balls.”

It makes perfect sense. But this is Bryce Harper, so even Soder had to remind himself of the degree of difficulty in what the two-time National League MVP was doing. Harper had to do the same thing.

”He probably figured, ‘I’m going to show up and do what I’ve always done,’ and at some point, I’m sure somebody said, ‘Hey, Bryce, you had a surgery where they told you you’re not going to be back until June or July,’ ” Soder said. “It was all gravy because nobody was expecting that.

“I wasn’t expecting him to go out and hit 45 home runs, but he’s got so much raw power that you expect Bryce, when he shows up, to drive some balls.”

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Harper said he built strength gradually, even as he tested it by learning to play first base. After slugging .400 before the All-Star break, he slugged .583 and smashed 18 homers, ranking eighth in the NL in the second half.

”Not being able to work out this offseason was pretty tough for me,” Harper said. “Not having a spring training. Trying to keep my body under me, my legs under me. Just really fortunate to have the people around me that have pushed me to get to this point.”

From afar, Soder can hardly believe how far Harper came, even if he learned long ago to never be surprised by the feats of Bryce.

“I’m more impressed by the average than I am surprised by the home runs,” Soder said. “But I’ve seen him since he was 13 years old, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that he’s just not what the rest of us are.”