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Bryce Harper's first pitch swing percentage has dropped by 9.7% this season to 44.4%. This change reflects a broader trend among the Phillies, who have collectively reduced their first pitch swing rate by 7.7%.
Bryce Harper's first pitch swing percentage in 2026 is 44.4%, down 9.7% from the previous year.
The Phillies have dropped their first pitch swing rate by 7.7% in 2026, more than any other team in baseball.
This season, Bryce Harper is seeing more breaking balls than fastballs on first pitches for the first time in his career.
The decrease in first pitch swings is partly due to team composition changes, including the departure of Nick Castellanos and the addition of Adolis García.

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| Player | First Pitch Swing %, 2025 | First Pitch Swing %, 2026 | Change, Year over Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bryce Harper | 54.10% | 44.40% | -9.70% |
| Trea Turner | 38.40% | 30.70% | -7.70% |
| Alec Bohm | 35.30% | 28.80% | -6.50% |
| Adolis García | 33.20% | 15.90% | -17.30% |
| Brandon Marsh | 32.10% | 28.60% | -3.50% |
| J.T. Realmuto | 29.50% | 28.60% | -0.90% |
| Kyle Schwarber | 27.50% | 22.70% | -4.80% |
| Bryson Stott | 13.40% | 11.90% | -1.50% |
| All of the Phillies starters have dropped their first pitch swing rate from last year. Even Bryson Stott, who swings at first pitches about as often as blue moons appear on leap years, has somehow found a way to do so less often. Part of this is (like everything else in April), small sample size. Case in point, during the time between my starting to poke around this topic and actually writing this, Stott’s decrease in first pitch swing % went from “wow, that’s a big drop” to “that’s a small, but notable drop” to “I’m pretty sure this doesn’t mean anything”. Realmuto’s drop also seems small enough to be negligible. But given that the growing reluctance to swing at the first offering is spread out across the entire team, it seems like there may be something real here. | |||
| The Phillies may be telling their hitters to take a more patient approach, to swing less at the first pitch (and not *just* at the first pitch— they’ve dropped their overall swing rate by 3.1%, more than all but five other clubs). That’s decreased their first pitch strike percentage by a bit (2.8%). I’m not so convinced that the decline in first pitch swing rate for the Phillies with small declines is all that meaningful; Realmuto and Stott’s declines are small enough to be noise, and Marsh and Schwarber’s drops could also turn out to be the same. But Harper and García seem to be genuinely more reluctant to swing at the opening offering, at least in the early going. It’s clear to me why Harper might want to make that change; only Castellanos was more likely to swing at first pitches last year, and pitchers are happy to exploit that. García’s change in approach is a little more surprising, both because of the size of the drop, and because he wasn’t unusually likely to swing at first offerings last year. But García is looking to return to form after an underwhelming 2025, and finding a way to get into more hitters counts certainly couldn’t hurt. | |||
| And on a team-wide level, the reasoning may be simple: no team in baseball was less likely to get a pitch in the zone last year. If pitchers aren’t inclined to give you something in the zone, taking fewer swings on first pitches gets you more 1-0 counts, and thus more pressure for the next pitch to be in the zone. Eventually, if pitchers realize giving a Phillie an out of the zone pitch on 0-0 is likely to get them a 1-0 count, then they’ll start off more at-bats with pitches in the zone. | |||
| It’s early. Not enough time has passed to gauge precisely how much of this is intentional strategy that’ll stick, and not enough time has passed to see how opposing pitchers will respond. So far, the Phillies are actually somewhat less likely to get pitches in the zone than they were last year. A lot of this could turn out to be noise. Still, it’s worth taking a swing at the first offering of early season data— even the Phillies are taking the opposite approach. |