Phillies announcer Tom McCarthy: Bryce Harper would be an ‘ideal’ player-turned-broadcaster

Bryce Harper is a man of many talents. He’s a superstar baseball player, TikTok influencer, food content creator, devoted raw milk drinker, and, apparently, a passable banana bread baker. It’s safe to say there’d be no shortage of content for us at Awful Announcing if he ever decided to try his hand at sports media.

But according to Phillies play-by-play voice Tom McCarthy, that might not be as far-fetched as it sounds.

“The guy that no doubt could do this if he ever wanted to do it is Bryce Harper,” McCarthy said during a recent appearance on the On Pattison Podcast. “And he’d be really good at it. And he’d be engaged. He’d be smart. He knows the game. He knows everything about the game. I think he would be ideal for it if he ever chose to do it”

Before Harper starts thinking about a second career, though, he might want to smooth things over with the commissioner’s office first.

Last July, Manfred met with the Phillies as part of his annual round of team visits, meetings designed to build goodwill between the league office and its players. But when the conversation turned to MLB’s economics and the looming fight over a salary cap, Harper stood up, walked to the middle of the room, got face to face with Manfred, and told him he could get the hell out of the clubhouse if that’s what he wanted to talk about. Manfred, for his part, held his ground and refused to leave, while later shrugging the episode off as overblown, even if the two haven’t exactly been chummy since.

Harper, however, is chummy with Kyle Schwarber, who McCarthy also said would be great at the job, even though Harper himself has joked that Schwarber doesn’t have the face for it. McCarthy also mentioned Rhys Hoskins, currently in the Cleveland Guardians organization, as someone who’d fit right in, too.

But for right now, the 33-year-old Harper, who won’t be a free agent until 2032, appears to be plenty content in his day job. Maybe we revisit this conversation in five years, when John Kruk turns 70, though it’s worth noting that the current duo of McCarthy and Kruk, plus the rotating cast of Ben Davis, Cole Hamels, and Ruben Amaro Jr., just polled at No. 6 in Awful Announcing’s 2026 local MLB broadcaster rankings.