Even owner John Middleton wondered if the Phillies could overcome Bryce Harper’s broken thumb

It looked bleak for the Phillies the last time they were in San Diego. Things have changed.

Bryce Harper meets with the media before working out at Petco Park on Monday.Read moreYong Kim / Staff Photographer

Updated Oct. 18, 2022, 10:00 a.m. ET

Published Oct. 17, 2022, 10:02 p.m. ET

SAN DIEGO — The morning after Bryce Harper took a 97 mph fastball off the left thumb and the Phillies’ season flashed before everyone’s eyes, the fan with the largest investment in the team spoke by phone with the reigning National League MVP.

“He told me he was going to try to play through it,” owner John Middleton recalled Monday. “I just said, ‘OK, Bryce. Let’s see what the doctors say.’”

All of the doctors agreed: The fracture was more severe than initially anticipated that night in San Diego. Harper would need surgery. The recovery time ranged from eight to 12 weeks. It was June 26. There were 14 weeks left in the season.

Middleton, who watched the game from home after hosting a dinner party, never said it aloud, certainly not to Harper, but the thought did cross his mind. Maybe this wasn’t going to be the Phillies’ year. Again.

“That’s exactly what you’re thinking,” Middleton said. “If it’s 12 weeks, you basically lost him for the year. It’s like, [shoot]. What can you do?”

Nearly four months later, the Phillies are back at the scene of the crime, and the mood has changed by, oh, about 180 degrees. Harper came back in nine weeks. The Phillies made the playoffs for the first time since 2011 by claiming a wild card that didn’t exist a year ago. And on Tuesday night, they face the Padres in Game 1 of the NL Championship Series, four wins from their eighth World Series appearance.

“What can you do?”

More like, “What can’t they do?”

“Any time you get hit or break a bone, those doubts creep in your mind of, you might not come back this year or what’s going to happen, how the team is going to react. The team reacted great, right?” Harper said. “The way they picked up the slack from me being hurt was incredible.”

But before the Phillies meet an equally upstart Padres club that has felt a similarly special vibe after knocking off the 101-win New York Mets and 111-win Los Angeles Dodgers, it was impossible not to think back to the fourth inning on June 25 when the sky over Petco Park nearly fell on them.

Harper knew it was serious immediately after getting drilled by Padres lefty (and Game 2 starter) Blake Snell. As manager Rob Thomson stood over him and head athletic trainer Paul Buchheit treated him, Harper said, “I think my thumb is broke.”

“That’s kind of a shocker,” Thomson said, “when one of your superstars goes down like that.”

Said ace Zack Wheeler: “He’s our guy. He’s our big bat in the lineup. You never know if it’s broke or not and how long he’s going to be out. Yeah, it was a bad night here.”

The Phillies were 37-35 at the time but 15-6 under Thomson, who was promoted three weeks earlier after Joe Girardi was fired. They were starting to play great, and Harper was in peak form. When his thumb met Snell’s fastball, he was batting .318/.385/.599 with a 168 OPS+, meaning he was 68% better than league average.

“He was spectacular,” Middleton said. “He was arguably having a better offensive year in 2022 through that moment in time than he was having in 2021 when he won the [MVP] award.”

Harper missed two months and took more time to regain his timing. He batted .227 with three homers and a .676 OPS over the final 35 games. But he has come alive in the playoffs. In six games, he’s 10-for-23 (.435) with three homers and a 1.437 OPS.

The NLCS will pit Harper against Padres star Manny Machado, with whom he has been linked since they were drafted first and third overall in 2010. They reached free agency together — at the unusually young age of 26 — and the Phillies pursued both. Machado even visited Citizens Bank Park on Dec. 20, 2018, and spent the day in meetings with team officials.

“That’s the beauty of being a free agent is you get to explore, you get to see everything,” Machado said. “Definitely [the Phillies] treated me well when I went there. It was a great time.”

Machado played in the 2018 NLCS with the Dodgers and didn’t run out a ground ball. Asked about it later, he memorably said, “I’m not the type of player that’s going to be ‘Johnny Hustle’ and run down the line and slide to first base.”

It proved to be a sliding-doors moment for the Phillies.

Before that comment, some top team officials preferred Machado over Harper, two sources recalled Monday. But Machado’s words were troubling to Middleton, who promised that offseason to spend stupid money but didn’t want to be stupid about it.

“Look, when you’re signing somebody for $330 million, a decade plus, it’s honestly as much about character as it is about ability,” Middleton said. “You have the ability or you’re not even talking to him. Then the question is, OK, what happens to the competitive athlete when you hand him a guaranteed 330 million bucks? You needed to kind of get to the bottom of really who the person is. Because at the end of the day, it’s the ambition that determines how hard they work at their job.”

There were other factors, too. Middleton recalled thinking Harper, as an outfielder, fit the Phillies’ needs better than Machado. They drafted third baseman Alec Bohm in the first round in 2018 but didn’t have any outfield prospects on the way.

But Middleton also was impressed with Harper’s character after twice flying to Las Vegas to meet with him, including a well-chronicled private dinner between the owner, the slugger, and their wives.

It’s part of the reason Middleton didn’t tell Harper that he was crazy for initially believing he could play through a broken thumb.

“I don’t think there was any doubt when I went down that we weren’t going to do what we needed to do to get here,” Harper said. “They had a great run when I was gone and they played great, and that’s why we’re here with this opportunity right now.”

That’s easier to say now than it was to believe then, even for the owner.