Harper tests wrist by hitting off tee, playing catch

PHILADELPHIA -- Bryce Harper is making progress, but he and the Phillies still don't have many answers -- neither about when he will return nor what caused his right wrist to flare up again this season.

Harper hit off a tee Friday afternoon for the first time since landing on the injured list on June 7 due to right wrist inflammation. He took 20 dry swings before taking 20 more swings off the tee. He also played catch on the field prior to the series opener against the Mets at Citizens Bank Park, all while wearing a brace on his wrist.

"Felt good today," Harper said. "I felt better than I thought it was [going to], so I'm happy about that."

If Harper's wrist responds well to this initial test, he'll go through a similar routine on Saturday.

Does that mean he's getting close to a return?

"I don't know," he said. "This is the first day swinging a bat, so I've just got to see how it feels tomorrow, see if we can progress. Once we do, I'll ramp up and see where I am."

That's essentially how Harper went through the first couple months of the season. He played through the pain from approximately mid-April until earlier this month.

Harper missed a handful of games after being hit on the right elbow on May 27, but he returned for the club's three-game series in Toronto from June 3-5 before the wrist issue put him on the shelf.

"When I came back and I was feeling the pain, it just wasn't a pain I could tolerate on the field," Harper said. "I understand what I can tolerate and what I can't. I've played through pain in my career -- I think everybody has at some point, right? So when I can play through the pain, I do, but it got to the point where I just couldn't do it."

That's where putting a timetable on his return becomes tough. It's essentially going to be a pain management issue, but there's no way to know when the discomfort will subside enough to allow Harper to consistently swing the bat every day.

Harper, who played through the same issue from May onward last season, said it's unclear why it returned this year.

"We haven't really gotten too many answers about it," Harper said. "... There's no structural issues, like I won't need surgery or anything like that. We've talked to multiple doctors, but just a lot of inflammation in that area."

Without answers as to why the inflammation came back, it's obviously impossible to say whether it could flare up again later this season.

While Harper said he was entirely pain-free from December until mid-April, the majority of that obviously falls during the offseason when he's not going through the daily grind of a baseball season.

Is there anything Harper can do differently as far as his workload between games to minimize the chances of a recurrence?

"That's obviously a great question, but it's a question I can't really answer right now because I don't know," Harper said. "I'm not happy that it came back, right? I was pain-free for probably four and a half months, and then it came back just randomly.

"I think those are things we're going to have to answer once I get going again -- how many swings I'm going to take, how many times I'm going to throw a ball or anything like that. It's tough not to take those swings or do any of those things, but just going to try to figure that out once we get there."

For now, Harper will be hoping his wrist still feels good when he wakes up on Saturday morning. From there, it will just be more rest and treatment -- and hoping.

"I hope the pain gets out of there, right? I don't want to play in pain at all," Harper said when asked if the expectation is that rest will completely fix the issue. "I think that's something that we'll see as that comes around. But hopefully it can get out of there."