Which batting stance will the Phillies’ Bryce Harper go with? It depends. Here’s why.

The Phillies’ Bryce Harper stepped to the plate in the ninth inning against the Blue Jays on Aug. 16. He’d already hit a home run earlier in the game, using his toe tap. But this time, he did something different.

He fouled off the first pitch, a curveball, and tapped his foot. He swung and missed at the second pitch, doing the same toe tap. He took pitch No. 3, a slider down. But on pitch No. 4, a 74 mph curveball, he kept both feet planted. He launched it 404 feet at 107.6 mph. It was Harper’s first — and, so far, only — multi-homer game of the season.

When he got back to the dugout, hitting coach Kevin Long approached him.

“What changed?” Long asked.

“I don’t know,” Harper said. “I just felt like I could go no-stride.”

On any given night, one might see Harper use three completely different stances. Sometimes, he uses the leg kick. Other times, he uses the toe tap. And every so often, he’ll go no-stride. Long loves when Harper goes no-stride. Harper’s teammates do, too.

“Everybody in the dugout kind of screams,” Long said. “We say, ‘Bryce is gonna get nasty on them.’ We know when he goes into a two-strike approach that something good is about to happen.”

Harper isn’t the only player to switch up his stance over the course of a season, a game, or even an at-bat. What makes him different is that he hits well in all three stances. He and Long like to say it’s another club in his bag.

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“You talk about golf, guys having a 6 [iron] or a driver or a 3-wood or something like that,” Harper said. “It’s kind of one of those things. If I feel good about it, I’ll do it. Just like if I’ll toe tap or not, or leg kick or not.”

It goes through waves. Harper spent parts of 2021 and 2022 going no-stride. He did it a bit in the playoffs last season. This season, he’s used the no-stride approach only sparingly. But we’ve seen it more in the past week.

In the first inning of Monday’s game against the Giants, Harper hit a line-drive RBI single to drive in Trea Turner. Again, he kept both feet planted while he swung.

Harper said no thought goes into this. It’s pure instinct. His teammates will ask him about it and he doesn’t have an answer for them. The best way he can describe it is a feeling that he has before he’s about to swing.

“It’s hard to explain,” he said “It’s just kind of how the mind works, I guess. I feel something and I just want to do it.”

Long wouldn’t mind if Harper used his no-stride more. He thinks that more times than not, when Harper goes to that approach, he puts the ball in play.

“I like the fact that he’s saying, ‘I’m going to be a tough out here,’” Long said. “‘I’m going to spread out. I’m going to make it really tough for you to strike me out and for me not to put the ball in play.’”

But of course, baseball players are creatures of habit. And while Harper likes to tinker — changing his bats and whether he wears gloves or not — he only likes to do it to a certain extent.

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“I enjoy [going no-stride] but I don’t at the same time,” he said. “I don’t want to change my swing so much. I can do two-strike with a toe tap or no-toe tap or leg lift or spread out … so there’s times that I’ll feel it and I’ll do it, and there are other times where I don’t.”

Wednesday was one of those times. In the ninth inning, Harper hit a game-tying, three-home run, tapping his toe before he did it. It’s just another club in his bag, as he says. But if anything, it speaks to his versatility.

Not only is Harper hitting .333/.420/.707 in August with a 1.127 OPS, but he’s doing it while using three different setups. After his home run on Wednesday, he’s now just three short of his 300 for his career. At the rate he’s hitting them, it might come this weekend. But even he can’t tell you what he’ll do with his feet whenever he reaches that milestone.

“I just felt like I wanted to do it,” Harper said. “I did it in Toronto, in that last at-bat, and I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know what came onto me. That’s the thing.”