FanHouse Bryce Harper

Fire up the Bryce Harper hype machine. The 16-year-old baseball prodigy who was recently hailed as the "Chosen One" on the cover of Sports Illustrated is poised to accelerate his path to the big leagues.

Harper, who is a rising high school junior, plans to earn a GED later this year and will enroll at the College of Southern Nevada, a junior college in Las Vegas, this fall and play baseball for the Coyotes next spring, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The move – virtually unprecedented – will allow Harper to be eligible for the draft a year early, in 2010 instead of 2011.

Poor Stephen Strasburg hasn't even been drafted, and already there's another kid threatening to steal his spotlight. His name is Bryce Harper. Up until Wednesday, he was known to baseball scouting directors and a small cadre of baseball junkies who attended high school showcase events.

But then he showed up on the cover of Sports Illustrated, accompanied by a story that declared he was baseball's version of LeBron James. Your first instinct is to be skeptical of such high expectations for a 16-year-old, but if you read the story, it's pretty remarkable.

Left on Base is MLB FanHouse's link dump.

You wanna see a future Hall of Famer at the age of 15? He could start in the bigs right now! I kid. Hyperbole aside, though, this 15 year-old player named Bryce Harper is already being touted as the first overall draft pick in 2011. He's a catcher who can run, bats left-handed, and already hits with major league power. Here's a highlight film of this young George Herman Ruth reincarnation.