This weekend could be your only chance to see Washington Nationals’ prospect Bryce Harper play in New Jersey this season. Harper is hitting .371 with seven home runs and 24 RBIs so far this season – it’s only a matter of time until he gets promoted.
Harper’s Hagerstown Suns will play the Lakewood BlueClaws in a four-game series beginning Friday night at 7:05 p.m. There will be a post-game fireworks show Friday night.
Saturday is the annual Bark in the Park festival, which begins at noon. Fans can bring their dogs to the 4:05 p.m. game. The series continues with a 1:05 p.m. start on Sunday and concludes with a 6:35 p.m. game Monday. For tickets and info, visit BlueClaws.com
You can also catch two of the New York Yankees’ highly-regarded pitching prospects in Trenton this week as the Thunder plays the Reading Phillies.
Dellin Betances (1-1, 1.38) is scheduled to start tonight’s game, while Manny Banuelos (0-0, 2.57) is slated to pitch tomorrow night. Both games are 7:05 p.m. starts. The first 1,000 fans at tonight’s game get a free travel mug; tomorrow’s giveaway is a bucket cap. For tickets and info, visit www.trentonthunder.com
PaulHadsall.com 
Hagerstown is actually in for a four-game series, wrapping around until Monday night’s finale. I’m going on Friday and Saturday.
My prediction — based on nothing but a hunch, or maybe even just a guess — was that Harper stays at Hagerstown until the South Atlantic League All-Star break in June, then skips high-Class A and goes right to Double-A Harrisburg for the rest of the season. Though, as hot as he’s been of late, maybe they do bump him up to Potomac before Harrisburg. I just hope they don’t do anything before this weekend!
And he’s also got to be etched in ink already for the Futures Game in Phoenix in July.
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Fixed. I’m not used to the four-game wrap-around series on the South Atlantic League schedule.
I’m not sure if there’s much point in leaving Harper at this level for another month, but I hope he gets to stick around long enough to for the Jersey folks to get to see him. If he hits .370 in AA in the second half, I expect to see Harper in the big leagues in September.
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