Matt of Matt's Bats: For Harper, maybe the best is yet to come

"He swings and hits a long drive to deep right-center! Going back is the center fielder! See you later! Another homer for Bryce Harper! This one wins the game!"

That's how Saturday's game ended: Nationals 8, Braves 6, on a walk-off home run by Bryce Harper. He killed a Cody Martin offering to right-center to end the game.

Harper has hit more than just a few home runs this past week. The Miami Marlins came to town, and Wednesday it was boom, boom, boom. Three home runs in one game. After an off-day on Thursday, the Nationals took on the Braves on Friday and Harper hit two more dingers. He is the youngest major league player to hit six home runs in three games.

And on Saturday, he was the decisive force in the Nats' win. He was just named NL Player of the Week, having hit 6 home runs with 13 RBIs and batting .455. This is just nuts.

Harper leads the National League with 11 homers this year. Throughout the entire 2014 season, Harper only hit 13 (but he was injured for most of the first half). Remember how he really turned it on in the postseason? This is a sign that Harper is finally entering his prime. It would be amazing if his choice of Frank Sinatra as his walk up song is true, and the best really is yet to come.

When he was only 16, Harper played in the 2009 Power Showcase, a high school home run derby. He absolutely assassinated a pitch, hitting it 502 feet into the catwalk in Tropicana Field, setting a record for the longest home run ever in The Trop. His homer was longer than any major league player has ever hit there. With the success Harper is having now, someone should let him know that he'll be playing in St. Petersburg, Fla., next month. Who thinks he'll beat his record?

You can make good cases that Stephen Strasburg, Ian Desmond or Jordan Zimmermann is the best homegrown talent on the Nationals, but I think that honor goes to Harper. I also think he is the best player on the team right now. With his massive arms, he can gun down a runner from right field throwing at a speed that seems as fast as a 737 taxiing down the runway at Reagan National. He hits home runs distances of greater than one and a half football fields. And he can flip a bat like the cook at a pancake restaurant. He steals bases like a master thief.

Off the field, he shows D.C. pride in lots of ways, like by showing up at Caps games, wearing a D.C. firefighter hat in the division clinching celebration and making friends with a sick teenager with a brain tumor. Opposing fans sometimes think he has a bad reputation, but I think Harper is a role model. He is also a great baseball player. I think being named NL Player of the Week is just the beginning, and he has a good shot at the MVP award at the end of the season.

The Nationals are on a hot streak right now. Wilson Ramos, is on a 14-game hitting streak, Ryan Zimmerman is coming out of his slump and just hit a three-run home run last night, and Danny Espinosa is showing signs of hitting well from both sides of the plate. We're waiting for Desmond and Jayson Werth to join them, plus we'll need to get Anthony Rendon back in the lineup, and once that happens, we'll see a lot more 10-run lopsided games. After a bad April, the Nationals are now back to being the team to beat in the NL East.

Ten-year-old Matt blogs about the Nationals at Matt's Bats. Follow him on Twitter: @MattsBats. He shares his views weekly as part of MASNsports.com's initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our little corner of cyberspace. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.