Bryce Harper is everywhere in Cleveland this week — just not in person.
Amusingly, Harper’s face adorns numerous banners and other promotional material for the All-Star festivities in Cleveland, but the problem is, thanks to a down year, Harper himself is nowhere near the Midsummer Classic this season.
All-Star banners are up in Cleveland. So… who’s gonna tell them? pic.twitter.com/yj2Ueg77k9
— Kelsey Wingert (@KelsWingert) July 8, 2019
You can understand why the people in marketing thought this would be a safe idea. Since entering the league in 2012, Harper only missed the 2014 All-Star game, and that was because he spent almost the entire first half of the season injured. He’s reliably been voted in as a starter by fans no matter how good or bad his numbers have been.
This year, however, Harper is hitting a modest .253 in his first year with the Philadelphia Phillies following a free agent move that alienated a lot of his old fans. Combine that with the presence of electric young stars like Cody Bellinger, Christian Yelich, and Ronald Acuna Jr., and Harper didn’t even come close to winning the fan balloting in 2019. Thus, the league will have to live with the fact that he’s not at the All-Star game, even if his face is all over the place.
