Harrison Bader took advanced placement art history at Horace Mann School, one of the most academically rigorous prep schools in the country. He had an abiding interest in architecture when he left his home in New York to play baseball at the University of Florida.

He figured he would study architecture with a minor in art history, and he explained as much to the baseball team’s academic advisor. When he finished, the advisor suggested that he study communications. He tried again to push for the major and minor that he wanted. The answer was “no.”

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“I was forced against my will to have that major, to be completely honest with you,” Bader said. “I strongly think it’s important that an athlete has the right to at least choose what he wants to study academically, but it isn’t the case a lot of times.”

Bader abandoned his intellectual interests on the spot, he concedes, to focus on a singular goal: To be the most complete major-league outfielder he could be. He has brought the rigor he might have applied to sketching designs for buildings to the lines and angles of a perfect route or a balanced swing.

Based on his history, it would be misguided to bet against the St. Louis Cardinals outfielder. He has been forcing his way through the game since the high school years when scouts and recruiters barely knew his name, through college coaches who doubted his athleticism and, now, at 24, as he waits for his everyday opportunity in an outfield packed with players on guaranteed contracts.

Bader is so skillful defensively, he has practically forced his way into the Cardinals’ plans. With Dexter Fowler stuck in a 2½-month rut — the 32-year-old is batting .177 with a .574 OPS and has a -1.1 WAR, in part because of his below-average outfield work — Bader has increasingly taken over playing time.

Bader is batting .265 with a .770 OPS, but it’s his defensive metrics that have changed the conversation.

He is the fifth-fastest player in the majors, with a sprint speed of 29.9 feet per second, according to Statcast, ahead of such speed merchants as Trea Turner, Mallex Smith and Rajai Davis. He is in the top five in outs above average, with seven, despite having far fewer opportunities than the other players in the rankings. The only better outfielders in the game by those measures are Delino DeShields Jr., Michael Tayler, Ender Inciarte and Adam Duvall.

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“At the end of the day, I just have taken tireless reps, reading breaks off the bat, perfecting my angles to the ball and just understanding spin,” Bader said. “My instincts take over once the game starts, and I don’t have to think very much out there.”

On Sunday, Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said Bader’s defensive play and speed have changed his lineup conversations.

“He is a well-above-average defender, and that’s all there is to it. He can be a game-changer out there,” Matheny said. “And even when he puts the ball in play to straight-up shortstop, they’re going to have to rush to get him. The league is learning how fast he’s getting down the line.”

Much of Bader’s success is the result of willpower rather than pure talent. Baseball was born in the environs of New York City and New Jersey, but a century and a half later, it’s not the easiest place for a baseball player —particularly one from an affluent suburb — to get noticed.

Bader had two things going for him: a drive to be great and parents with the resources and desire to help him get there. His father, Louis, is retired after working as the chief in-house legal counsel for Verizon. His mother worked in marketing for Time-Life publications.

To be tested against the best competition in New York, the Baders had to leave the bubble of Westchester County and the Upper West Side and visit the outer boroughs.

“I’ve always been a baseball player, and the good baseball in New York has always been Spanish. That’s just kind of the way it is,” Bader said.

His dad made arrangements for him to try out for the New York Grays, a nonprofit baseball club that helps low-income young players get into a structured environment that, in many cases, leads to college scholarships. Louis Bader is listed as one of the top four donors to the program.

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The Grays’ founder, David Owens, said he distinctly recalls Bader – then 15 — walking into a gym in the Bronx at 8 o’clock on a weekend morning and joining the rest of the Grays players, roughly 65 percent of whom were of Dominican descent, Owens said.

“The first time meeting all the kids, I wanted to see how he’d react,” Owens said. “He paused maybe a half a second and then his personality took over. He walked in and met everybody then started doing drills. We became like a little family. I told him soon after he was drafted and signed that walking into a pro clubhouse was going to be a lot easier growing up with all these kids from the Dominican.”

Shortly after watching Bader take at-bats and run routes, Owens said he told Louis Bader that he could help make his son a professional player.

“There was something about him I saw right away, that if he put it all together, I think we have something here,” Owens said. “His dad was typical, ‘Yeah, right, well, he’d better study still.’ I had a conversation with Harrison where I said, ‘If you want to, I will work with you.’ He was that kid. He said, ‘Hey, this is an opportunity. Let’s do this.’ He hit every day. Three times a week, I’d pick him up in my car and we’d go to a place right by the school and hit for an hour and a half.”

Even by his senior year, though, pro scouts barely knew Bader was alive, and college recruiters were tepid on him. Cornell wanted him. Eventually, the University of Pittsburgh started sniffing around. Maryland came calling. Late that summer, while Bader played in a tournament in Florida, Gators coaches approached Louis Bader and mentioned they had a scholarship to offer after two of their outfield recruits signed to play pro ball.

“He’s incredibly tough. He was banged down his whole life,” Louis Bader said. “He wasn’t highly recruited even though he was better than a lot of the kids who got good spots at good schools. It was pure luck he went to Florida.”

Bader had some rocky times with the Gators. He said he still resents the coaches moving him out of center field to accommodate a player named Buddy Reed, who is now toiling in Class A ball for the San Diego Padres.

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But it eventually got him where he wanted to be. Bader was drafted by the Cardinals in the third round in 2015. They agreed to pick him only if he agreed to take less than the slot value of the pick, so he signed for $400,000, $170,000 under slot.

“We would have paid them,” Louis Bader joked.

For the first time in Bader’s baseball life, it felt like if he performed, he advanced, his father says. He had an .892 OPS his first season between two Class A teams and spent all of 2016 at Double A and Triple A. By last season, he had reached St. Louis, spending part of July and all of September with the big club.

Bader recalls meeting Tommy Pham while Pham was rehabbing an injury in the minor leagues and feeling he had met a kindred spirit. Both players put extra work into their outfield defense while many players put only the mandatory effort into defense and all of their extra work into hitting.

Bader’s approach has made him popular with the more old-school elements of the Cardinals’ coaching staff.

“He’s got all he needs to have. He’s doing it right. Simple as that,” said Cardinals outfield coach Willie McGee. “He works on every aspect of his game, and that’s what you need to do to be the best you can be.”

Now Bader is in the big leagues, and the biggest challenge has been learning to perform well off the bench. He has a .776 OPS as a starter and a .446 OPS as a sub. The Cardinals owe Fowler $49.5 million beyond this season, so it seems unlikely that they’d completely bench him. But each day they seem more willing to make Bader the primary right fielder.

Louis Bader and David Owens spoke about how welcoming and helpful Fowler has been to Harrison Bader even as the two jostle for playing time.

“Specific to contracts and the guys around me, I pay no attention to that. That’s in other peoples’ hands, and all I can do is put my body of work in front of the people making decisions and hope I come out favorably in the end,” Bader said.

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History suggests that things tend to work out favorably for Bader, mostly because puts himself in the proper position.

(Top photo courtesy of David Owens)