The Showman returned for a ‘huge’ WBC moment. And it could be big for Bryce Harper and the Phillies, too.

CLEARWATER, Fla. — Bryce Harper reached into his locker and pulled out a CS8 digital camcorder. He took it on his 18-day odyssey to the World Baseball Classic and said he captured about 100 hours of black-and-white footage behind the scenes with Team USA.

So, when does the documentary come out?

“It’ll be good for my TikTok,” Harper said.

OK, while we wait, it’s a good time to check in on Harper. He eased back into spring-training mode here Thursday after winning a silver medal. By this time next week, he will have begun his 15th major league season.

» READ MORE: Team USA came up short in the WBC final, but Bryce Harper left a mark — with his bat and his words

Can it really be 15 years? Is that possible? How is it even seven years since that first Saturday of March in 2019 when he high-fived The Phanatic atop the first-base dugout for his introductory Phillies news conference?

Time flies when you’re the Face of the Franchise.

But this is an interesting time for Harper. He will play this season at age 33. And when a 33-year-old future Hall of Famer is coming off a season in which he put up across-the-board numbers that weren’t up to his skyscraping standards, people (read: scouts) start to whisper.

Is he slipping?

If you’re Harper, your boss even addresses it publicly.

Harper went 3-for-20 with seven strikeouts through the first five games of the World Baseball Classic. Sometimes his bat looked slow. Other times he swung at pitches out of the strike zone.

But Harper turned on a 96-mph heater and doubled down the right-field line in a semifinal victory over the Dominican Republic. He singled on a 95-mph sinker down in the zone in the sixth inning of the gold-medal game.

And then, with the Americans down to their last four outs, he crushed a 93-mph pitch to dead center field for a game-tying two-run homer. He threw his bat like a javelin. He pointed to the flag on his sleeve and flexed for the camera around third base.

» READ MORE: Bryce Harper says Dave Dombrowski’s ‘not elite’ comment is ‘kind of wild to me still’

“I just tried to enjoy it, right?” he said upon returning to Phillies camp. “I tried to enjoy the moment. Looking up into the stands, it kind of felt obviously like Game 5 [of the 2022 NLCS]. I think I said that [at the time]. Being able to put a country on your back and make something happen late in that game was huge for our team.”

For Harper, too.

Maybe the most telling stat from Harper’s atypical 2025 season was his lack of clutch hits. Of the Phillies’ 43 biggest hits, based on Win Probability Added, only one belonged to Harper. He had four of their 13 biggest hits from 2019-24.

So, yeah, it had been a while since The Showman put on a show like Tuesday night in Miami.

“I felt great the whole time,” he said of his showing at the WBC. “I just felt like my timing was a little off. I thought my swing felt great. I thought I was getting 3-2 a lot of the time. Definitely missing some pitches over the plate. But I think everything was about timing.

“If we had a week left in that tournament, I feel like I would have turned the corner and been pretty good.”

In that case, it should bode well for the Phillies.

Ever since Harper was a star on the youth baseball circuit, his dad has offered a consistent piece of advice.

“Take your walks.”

Harper has walked 100 times in four seasons. In winning an MVP with the Phillies in 2021, he might have been most proud of drawing his 100th walk in his last plate appearance of the season finale in Miami.

Last season, Harper had a 12.1% walk rate, less than his 14.4% career average. He swung at 35.6% of pitches out of the strike zone, well above his 29.3% career mark.

Maybe it had to do with who hit behind him in the lineup.

» READ MORE: ‘Not elite’ Bryce Harper could use better lineup protection. Here are the Phillies’ options.

For much of the season, Harper batted behind 56-homer star Kyle Schwarber. Who batted behind Harper? Alec Bohm, J.T. Realmuto, and Nick Castellanos were the usual suspects, and the Phillies ranked 20th in baseball with a .720 OPS from the cleanup spot.

But Harper often maintains that teams tend not to pitch to him regardless of the batting order. Schwarber would seem to represent Secret Service-level protection. Yet in 45 games with Schwarber behind him last year, Harper actually saw a lower rate of strikes (41.7%) than his season average (43%), which was the lowest of any hitter in baseball.

So, he hears his dad’s words ringing in his ears. He wasn’t patient enough. He didn’t draw enough walks. He needs to fix that.

OK, but how?

“I mean, just giving a crap about it, right?” Harper said. “Just making sure I do it. Obviously that’s a big thing for me, so if I can hone in my strike zone and understand I’m really good when I walk. So, if I can walk 140-150 times this year, then I think I’ll be right where I want to be.”

“It’s just buying in.”

Looking back, did Harper not “buy in” last year?

“No, I was,” he said. “I just need to make sure I walk and not just want to get hits all the time. I want to hit. I want to be a hitter, obviously. I want to make moves. I want to hit homers and hit doubles and all those things. But sometimes, it’s better for me if I walk. I can do that a little bit more this year.”

Harper’s career-high walk total is 130 in 2018 with the Nationals. Since he broke into the majors in 2012, only two players have walked more than 140 times in a season: Juan Soto (145 in 2021) and Joey Votto (143 in 2015).

» READ MORE: How can Bryce Harper have an ‘elite’ season in 2026? It starts with examining his atypical 2025.

But Phillies hitting coach Kevin Long, who has worked with Harper since 2018 with the Nationals, has another goal in mind.

“I think he expanded [the strike zone] a little bit more last year than we’re accustomed to,” Long said recently. “His chase rate ended up being 35%, maybe 36%. That’s high. Whereas, if he gets that number down to 32%, you just drop it 3%, you’re going, ‘Well, he’s swinging at better pitches, he’s going to do more damage.’

“Just throw that into the equation, that’s probably it more than anything.”

Maybe it was beneficial, then, that Harper spent the last three weeks playing for heightened stakes of a gold medal instead of muddling through spring-training games in Florida.

At-bats mean more in the WBC than the Grapefruit League.

“When you’re getting in those moments in those situations you’ve got to lock it in as quick as possible,” Harper said. “So, yeah, I mean, obviously that’s going to help. But I think the main thing is just making sure I stay within myself and stay in my zone and get to where I need to go.”

As much as any player in baseball, even the Yankees’ Aaron Judge, Harper needs to go back to the World Series — and win it this time.

» READ MORE: Don Mattingly could give Bryce Harper’s career a boost with the Phillies. Maybe Harper can reciprocate.

Harper has played in the majors for nearly half his life and been to the playoffs eight times, including the last four seasons with the Phillies. The closest he’s come to winning it all was Game 6 of the World Series in 2022. The Nationals, his first team, won in 2019, the year he left for the Phillies.

Despite Harper’s largely quiet WBC, Team USA reached the final Tuesday night. He notched two of the Americans’ three hits in the game, including their signature moment of the tournament with his game-tying home run.

But Harper went home championship-free. Again.

Harper said he hopes the WBC will be a “steppingstone to L.A.,” reiterating a stance that he has taken often over the years that MLB should allow players to compete in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

“What an opportunity we have,” Harper said, “to hopefully play in the Olympics.”

Harper will be 35 then. He expects to still be productive.

“Winning a gold medal in the WBC would have been incredible,” Harper said. “But also, winning a World Series trophy is what you play for, what you dream for. Hopefully looking forward to doing that this year.”