Demands a new locations. Have at it for now
Update :
Now free to talk about details, Barry notes the Nats deal may have up to 100 MILLION in deferred money.
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SECOND MOST POPULAR BLOG OF THE LAST SEASON PLAYED WITHOUT THE STUPID EXTRA-INNING GHOST RUNNER WORLD CHAMPION WASHINGTON NATIONALS
61 comments:
ESPN is saying 13 years/$330 so AAV of $25 per year with no opt outs. Why weren't the Nats in on this???
He took a lower AAV go to to a crappy team in a crappy town. May he never live up to expectations.
That's a weird deal. No opt outs. Is there trade protection, or does he WANT to be traded in five years?
13 years!?!?
If he hits .220 in Philly, he'll get batteries thrown at him. Oh well. I'm glad I saw him play and might still in the future. I don't think Bryce is worth $25M a year.
Bryce Harper is dead to me.
Baaaaaaaarf
If Bryce stays healthy the Nats will face him in 247 games over the life of the contract.
Largest contract ever, until Trout hits free agency next year. Enjoy your record Bryce! Hope you enjoy those philly fans when you hit .250 next year!
What is the difference between $300 million and $330 million? If I was that rich, I'd gladly pay $30 million NOT to live in a city I don't like (Philadelphia)
Lack of trade protection was probably a demand by Bryce. I mean, seriously, does anyone want to spend 13 years in Philly?
Juan Soto will be better than Bryce Harper in 2019 and in 2031. Nats dodged a bullet. Plus you have to live in Philthadelphia. One of the dirtiest, crappiest cities in America.
I kinda think they got a bargain. There really wasn't anywhere near the market for him that I thought there was.
i just can't get over how petty some athletes can be. wanted to top stanton's contract so bad just to prove he's the "best." so dumb. congratulations, not sure what he will be able to buy with that extra $5 million that he couldn't have bought with the first $325 million.
also - do we know for sure that the deal the Nats offered him of 10/$30mill had deferred money?
also, philly really just played themselves, as it will be much more difficult for them to sign trout next year, despite their promises of spending "stupid money"
So now we see if they got 2015 BRYCE or 2018 bryce.
As others have pointed out, there's a bit of ego involved here, both Bryce and Boras. We'll see who the genius is, I guess.
@Myrtha. You don’t think Bryce is worth 25 mil a year? Really. So you’re saying Patrick Corbin is worth the same as Bryce? Because to be clear, we are paying Corbin 6/140....over 23m AAV. We’ll be paying Corbin basically the same AAV as Bryce will be making. The back half of the contract won’t be great but the Phillies have a barbain big time for the next 7-8 years, man. And that gives them flexibility under the cap.
@Anon. As we have said a million times, who cares if Soto is as good as Bryce? He would be replacing Adam Eaton who will probably be playing 70 games +Michael A Taylor. Instead we’ll have to pitch to the best hitter in the NL and second best hitter in baseball 17 times a year forever. (If you doubt my last claim, check out fangraphs projections....Harper wRC+ projection of 148 is second only to Trout. So a computer is saying that, not me. This is a bad bad day for the Nats.). For those saying otherwise, hopefully you will saying the same when the guy’s winning MVPs with 1.000 OPS each year and we’re chasing the Phillies.
Call me crazy but I think there is an excellent chance that Bryce lives up to this deal. If he has even 2 seasons in the next 13 years that live up to his 2015 performance, the Phillies have recouped half the value of the contract right there.
@Bx - another way to look at that is would you sign Corbin for $190M for 7 years after this contract is over and that is a definite no.
Good riddance. Nats don't need the drama, the cap hit, and the roadblock to developing younger and more talented OFers. He should have gone west; we wouldn't have cared as much...
@BxJaycobb It matters if Soto is as good as Bryce because teams win when they have better players. My statement was simply that Soto, who was the best teenage hitter, maybe ever, will eclipse Harper. Given that the contract is for 13 years, Soto will hit FA during that time and the Nats will need those funds to re-sign him.
Adam Eaton will play a lot more than 70 games. Yes, Harper is a great hitter when he's hot, but his defense is bad and getting worse which significantly diminishes his overall value. Signing helps a mediocre Philthies team contend now, but it's gonna hurt between 2027 and 2031.
Harper is a very streaky hitter, with lots of moving pieces in his swing. I think he'll always be prone to hot and cold streaks. Teams will learn that when he's hot, give him the Bonds treatment and when he's not you can get him out.
Yet another way to look at this is that Rendon is going to be making 5-7 million more per year than Bryce. I can't believe the Nats are this dumb. I agree with Bx. The Nats offer last year was a joke. The word on the twitter is that the Nats "offer" deferred $100 million. They were going to pay him until he was 60. In fact, the MLB was nervous about the amount of the deferrals. The fact that the Nats brass even thought that was an offer tells you a lot. Then Mark Lerner goes and pouts about the fact that Harper and Boras never "got back to them." I'll be honest, I've followed them ever since they came to DC, but as of right now I'm done with them. Not signing Harper at $25/year is crazy.
Weird contract. Is all I can say. But, I think it legitimately makes Philly a contender for the division this year. If not the favorite.
This is interesting in a lot of ways. Bryce (or Boras) seems to have really wanted that "Biggest Contract EVER!!!" support, to take a $25M AAV for 13 years with (apparently) no opt-outs.
The fact that the contract runs through his age 38 season may or may not have caused a drop in AAV. The big selling point of the Machado/Bryce FAs was supposed to be that they were so young a team could give them a mega-years contract, and yet Bryce's contract goes beyond that so it dunks into his decline phase anyway. Sure, the Phils get one more year of "prime" Bryce than the Rockies get of "prime" Arenado, but they have to put up with an extra four years of "very decline" Bryce on the back end. On the other hand, the Phillies save $7.5M per year versus Arenado's contract, presumably because of those extra years.
I'm guessing 40+ HR for Bryce next year, barring injury, and a typically excellent OBP. Though with park modifiers, I doubt his wRC+ and similarly adjusted stats will find him to be any better a hitter next year.
Obviously, a lot of ink will be spilled over whether Bryce is or is not better than Adam Eaton next year. But for the Phillies, that doesn't make a bit of difference. All they care about is how much better Bryce is than Nick Williams, and I think we can all agree that answer is "quite a lot better" even if Bryce continues to stink on ice on defense (and hey, he's still better than Rhys Hoskins at OF!).
Mind you, if Bryce's defense does continue to decline, I reserve the right to flip-flop and oppose the NL DH (which I otherwise heavily favor) just from the schadenfreude.
With Harper, Realmuto, Segura, and McCutchen, the Phillies have turned over half their lineup and replaced Crawford/Kingery, Santana, Alfaro, and Williams/Altherr with two All-Stars, a third guy who could be one, and a fourth player who's likely to hit well above league average. With the Mets' rotation backed by Diaz, the Braves' host of young talent, and the Nats' overall excellence, the NL East is going to be a brutal slugging match all the way to the end of the year. Pity the Marlins.
Still wish he'd ended up with the Giants, though.
Bx - In what alternate universe is Bryce Harper the best hitter in the National League? There are two better hitters on the Nationals right now. There is not anyway to manipulate data to back up that statement. Bryce had one great year. One. The rest of the time he has been Justin Upton. He got paid. Good for him. Thank goodness it wasn't the Nats that took the bait.
...also I think Bryce is going to rock it in Philly. That is a pretty short stoke to RF. They've had some rough past few years but they are a legitimate, historical baseball town with loyal (albeit, disgusting) fans.
@Anon your points make no sense. So you’re not signing Bryce because you’re worried about paying Soto? My point comparing Corbin to Bryce is how low the AAV is. Of course the last few years won’t be great, but 25m simply isn’t an albatross amount of money in ten years, plus the ENTIRE REASON FOR NOT SIGNING BRYCE AND SIGNING RENDON was that you could spend money on other players to make the team better. Well i have news for you. Anthony Rendon is going to just as much against the cap, and he may well cost more than 25 million dollars. IOW you would have more money to spread around each year to other players with Bryce on the team, not Rendon. The AAV is critical because it gets to the key question: how much money does it take away from making the rest of the team better? For two years now I’ve been hearing people on here say “would you rather pay Bryce 35-40m a year or Rendon 25m and have 10-15m for other players?!” Guess what! Bryce is making 25 AAV. To not pay that while we are in a competitive window is utterly ludicrous. And again, if you are seriously not paying Bryce Harper 25 AAV because you want enough money for Juan Soto in 2025, when the Nats will have zero dollars committed anywhere else on the roster......im glad you’re not running the team.
Deferred money, while technically worth less because of the future value of a dollar, is actually often beneficial because it helps considerably for tax purposes. Everyone complaining the Nats offer with significantly higher AAV wasn't any good because of deferred money is just wrong. Regardless, I prefer Rendon long-term to Harper and the Nats are better that way too as Harper is easily replaced by Soto/Eaton, whereas Rendon would be replaced by the much less sure thing Garcia.
Trout in 2020!
@Anon. The alternate universe is Fangraphs Steamer and ZIPS projections. Here you will see Harper projected to have the second highest wRC+ in baseball to Trout, and the highest in the NL by a fair amount. I’m sure you know better than the projection systems used by front offices though.
https://www.fangraphs.com/projections.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&type=steamer&team=0&lg=all&players=0&sort=22,d
@JWLumley - market returns on the marginal amount post-tax will still outpace deferred tax savings.
Lumley! Where the hell you been dude? 😉
@BxJaycobb I'll spell it out for you and try to use small words. First I made none of the assertions you ascribe to me. I'm saying it's not a great contract for either side. For Harper, he left money on the table because he was afraid no one would sign him after he turns 35, didn't factor in inflation etc. For the Philthies, it's not a great contract because while it helps now, they don't need payroll flexibility now and it's going to suck in the last 4-5 years of his contract.
From a Nats perspective, this allows them to re-sign Rendon, who won't get Arenado money, but will likely get about $25M a year. When you factor in defense, which you should, Rendon is a better player than Harper, especially when you remove their outlier seasons. As for Soto, yes, you'll need lots of money to sign him when he turns 26 and hits free agency, because he will be another Harper or AROD, but he will be a free agent during a new collective bargaining agreement, which I think will address the competitive balance that has 30-50% of teams tanking every year.
Finally, the Nats don't really need Harper. Yes, he'll likely be slightly better than Eaton, maybe 1-2 wins? but given his defense and injury history, there's a decent chance he isn't. If the Nats want to spend more money, go get Kimbrel. Kimbrel would be a huge upgrade over what they have. Or sign Keuchel who would also be a significant upgrade over Hellickson.
@Froggy I took a year off from following baseball to spend more time with my kids. (I peaked a little to watch Juan Soto)
Since I don't disagree with BX's stats, which I agree with Bryce being very good as a player, I will explain why I don't think Bryce is worth $25M a year. (And almost any other player, for that matter. Not you, Trout.)
25M a year is 1/8 of the luxury cap in 2019. The Nats already have 3 boat anchors (Max, Corbin, Stras) that limit who they can sign other places (See our bullpen for exhibit A). 13 years is forever in baseball. I get that Bryce is young, but that's 13 years to drag that salary around. $25M for 5 years? Sure. I don't agree that Bryce is worth $25M 13 years from now. Philly disagrees.
For the record, I don't like big, chunky contracts unless the team is going all in. If the Lerners ran the Nats like Mike Ilitch ran my Detroit Red Wings, who had tons of big contracts and some deferred ones and went all-in 25 straight years in the playoffs, sure. But we have the Lerners, and they never heard of all-in.
I'll miss Bryce. I cheered him from my seats, at the park and my living room, but he was always going to leave to chase the money. I don't agree with the contract, but not because Bryce can't back it up, at least for a while. I doubt he can for 13 years, is all. And if Philly got 2018 Bryce for 13 years, they got robbed. I will cheer that.
I've got two little ones now as well so I know what you mean. Soto and Robles have the potential for us to be saying "Bryce who" for a few years.
Welcome back!
@Mythra. Of course he won’t be worth 25m at the end of the contract. The point is he will be worth more than 25m for the first half of the deal. So far in his career he has averaged 4.5 WAR a year....and 1 WAR/8m$ according to Jay Jaffe at fangraphs, so he’s been worth around 36m per year on average. He’s going to be outperforming the deal until like year 7, then I’m sure he’ll be worth around 25m for a few years, then he will be worth less than 25m in years 10-13 or whatever. The point is he clearly is worth the overall contract. You can’t sign free agents if you judge the deal by whether the guy will be worth it in the last few years. Re we already have big contracts....so are you planning on not signing Rendon? Because he will be 25+ mil. If we’re done signing 25m AAV deals then the Nats are down competing in the NL East in which case we should start the rebuild. I’m totally serious. If we can afford neither Rendon nor Harper we will not be competitive. Re the luxury tax, that tax is peanuts. If we went over by 15m (currently we’re 15 below), the tax would be like 3 million. The Lerners are going to let Harper walk because of a 3m tax?
Bx - please don't give me projections. My point was there are two better hitters on the present Nats team. He was projected higher than he performed the last three seasons. Let's deal with real performance. Now did he dog it last year for the Nats to preserve his viability for a long term deal? I don't know but as a season ticket holder I sure got tired his disinterested, glove on the hip, look in right and center field last year. You like him, that's fine. And he may prove me wrong. but he will have to up his game to do so. And if he does, what an indictment that a "generational player" was not interested in playing to his best for 22 million a season.
@Anon he has a higher career OPS than Rendon. He has more WAR than Rendon. He has a higher career wRC+ than Rendon. So you can just say things all you want. I’m bringing you facts. Do you know how projections work? It incorporates everything the person has ever done and spits out the likeliest outcome. That means it takes into account 2016 and 2018 (he was tremendous in 2017, but i guess that didn’t happen). He’s also the odds on favorite in Vegas to win the NL MVP. If you want to say that a person who has a higher career wRC+ than Ken Griffey Jr. is meh and Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto are both going to be better...and not only that...but SO much better, that we shouldn’t replace Adam Freaking Eaton with a generational player, fine. God bless. To not sign a guy in his prime for Arrieta money who, but for a wet base, would have won 2 MVPs before age 25, is just so incredibly dumb. This team now less talent on the roster than the Braves and Phillies, and possibly Mets.
Philly stole him. So glad to have him off the team, but this is painfully cheap. As a Philly, even if you hate him, you have to love this deal. The Net present value of his payments in the last three years are around $18 million each at a 2.5% inflation rate. Probably won't be worth that either, but it's a lower bar.
Oh. I forgot to add this. For those saying that it’s lame that Bryce turned down 10/300 from Nats just to reach 330 million, that’s not what happened. According to Barry Svurluga, the Nats offer had *100 million dollars deferred so that Bryce Harper would be receiving salary when he was 60. Apparently it made MLB and Players Association queasy. Bringing present day value to 244 million. In other words, the Nats were never serious. They made the offer to show something to the fans. Harper went to the Phillies for almost 100 million dollars more. That’s perfectly justifiable. If you wish Bryce was still on the Nats (I know some don’t), then he’s not the villain. The Lerners are. Here is the tweet:
https://twitter.com/barrysvrluga/status/1101219673373360133?s=12
Dude. You’re a little behind. Harper left no money on the table. The Nats offered 300mil with 100 of it deferred for years until Harper was literally 60. The present day value of the offer was 244 million. Harper got like 90 million more dollars. It’s not about being scared about age 35. The Nats offer was a smoke screeen. It wasn’t remotely close and apparently it made MLB uncomfortable it was so ridiculous with the deferrals.
https://twitter.com/barrysvrluga/status/1101219673373360133?s=12
You’re really saying an offer with 244 million present day value is better than an offer with 330 million present day value? I can’t see the tax savings coming close to making up that gap.
@Anon You don’t think the Phillies “need the payroll flexibility” now and will only need it once Harper’s on the decline? What is that analysis based on? Of course they need it the next couple years *desperately*. Theyre not a team or young cheap players with one or two free agents. They’re already at 170+ million with Bryce and want room for either another free agent this/next year or space for Trout in 2020. A lower AAV is everything to them. It’s critical.
And BTW the NL will have the DH for probably 12 of the deal’s 13 years, so you won’t need Harper to play defense on the back end.
If Svrluga is correct, it seems like neither Bryce nor the Lerners were ever serious about him staying in DC.
Bx,
Vent away. It's all bad news, and anyone who says otherwise is trying to make themselves feel better too.
On its merits, the following 2 things are true:
It's bad for the Nats that Bryce is gone.
It's bad for the Nats that he signed with Philadelphia.
Bx - Harper's one season (2015) makes any reasonable comparison sketchy because it skews his numbers. But over the past three seasons Rendon has a higher WAR (14.1 to 7.5). As of this moment he is by any measure the better player and has been for any recent memory. The halcyon days of 2015 are long gone. He is a Philly now and he picked the right city for him. Blaming the Lerner's for offering a fair contract is lame. That the Phillies chose to pay for hype is justified because they need to re-energize their fanbase. But if Harper throws a first half like 2018 at them, he will wish he were in Miami, Shangri La or Atlantis! Anywhere but Philly.
Good for Bryce that he got his money. I'm surprised he ended up in Philly. I figured that he would have wanted to play in a bigger market.
I guess he'll go into the HOF as a Phillie then?
I won't boo him when he comes to Nats Park. I don't think he spurned the Nats. I'm sure if the Nats offered the exact same thing as the Phillies, he'd have come back to the Nats. After getting underpaid for years, I'm fine with him wanting to get a big payday.
Was really hoping he wouldn't end up on the Phillies. Like I think of all the teams he could have ended up on, that would have been my last choice. Oh well.
@Anon “the halcyon days of 2015 are long gone.” In 2017, Harper slashed .319/.413/.595. An OPS of 1.008. Again, if he doesn’t slip on a base, he has two MVP trophies. Here’s an article from somebody on Planet Earth, where Harper’s wRC+ of 140 is the same as ARod’s was at this age, and is better than any 26 year old free agent besides ARod himself. The article notes that Harper is on a Hall of Fame pace and EVEN IF YOU TAKE OUT HIS HALL OF FAME SEASON he still has statistical comps to Hall of Famers. It’s written by Dan Szymborski, one of the 3-4 most respected analytics writers. But feel free to ignore it, as you did the Steamer projections.
For the rest of everybody, it’s a good piece. Basically notes that no matter what Harper does, folks are quick to find faults. When a future HOF in his prime is on my team, I prefer the team sign him. (BTW there’s no guarantee whatsoever Rendon stays—hopefully everybody realizes that.)
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/phillies-get-bryce-harper-and-bryce-harper-gets-massive-payout/
Sorry that’s not the Szymborski one....but still a good piece from fangraphs.
I wonder if the Lerners would accept deferred rents from the tenants of one of their malls?
I think a lot of the fun of watching this team for the last several years is gone. It was already very disappointing last season without Dusty Baker, and I still don't think Dave Martinez can manage his way through a department store aisle. I hated to see guys like Danny Espinoza, Adam LaRoche, and Ian Desmond go, but this is way different. I hope I can enjoy it as much as I did, but no Bryce, no Murphy, no Dusty.....if they let Max walk in two years I'll scream.
OTOH, it will be fun watching Max strike out Bryce for the next couple of years. I just hope the rotation works out that Max gets a start in as many series against Philly as possible.
Let's not get too carried away with the Nats' 10 yr/$300 million offer and the deferral piece. It was an opening offer designed to gauge interest from Harper. It was the START of negotiations and when Harper and Boras never responded, it was clear it was over. He had zero interest in returning and the Nats moved on. What was unanticipated was the weak market for Harper. The Phillies' contract was a huge comedown -- they clearly thought in terms of 10yrs/$400 million+. In that light, the Nats opening position was easy to walk away from. 4 months later, after spring training opened, they got a deal not all that much better than the opening one. THey probably would have gotten it or something similar to it from the Nats in November if they wanted. This deal tells me Philly was negotiating against itself the entire time. The rest was BS.
By the way, has this deferral been confirmed? It has the earmarks of a targeted Boras leak to make the gap between the Nats offer and the Phils contract look much wider than it really is. Boras was also yapping about turning down offers of a few years at $45 million. BS. As a matter of math, that contract was worth $270 million and he would have been free agent at 31. I suspect there was a lot of disinformation from Boras. Heck, he got irritated when the Nats publicly stated that they did not plan to negotiate further, likely because he was telling Philly that the Nats were aggressively pursuing Harper.
Rizzo handled this correctly. He has been planning for Harper's departure for years and while this is a loss, it is much less of a loss than it could have been. We will see.
It would be fruitless to get in the middle of this he's-a-bum/he's a Hall-of-Famer squabble over Harper. Ultimately, it will resolve itself 19 times a year over the next 13 years.
Still, it might be worth acknowledging one of the recurrent afflictions in the history of this star-crossed franchise: After leaving the Expos for free agency, first Andre Dawson, then Larry Walker, then Vladimir Guerrero all won MVP awards for their new teams.
@SM That is really unfair. THe Expos were essentially a farm team for the rest of MLB. How they ran that franchise should have been a felony (although I am thankful that it resulted in us getting a team). The Nats have been willing to spend and spend big to get and keep players, one of the few in MLB willing to do so - which is another reason the "deferral" story of $100M until Harper is 60 to be really, really fishy. It would be completely inconsistent with how this club does business with free agents, including this off season..
THe conspiracy theorist in me thinks it plausible that Boras was so furious when the Nats publicly stated that they were not in negotiations with him on Harper (Boras did not hide his anger), which hurt his negotiations with Philly, he leaked a "deferral" disinformation story to stick it to the Nats. Boras is a master of disinformation.
i honestly dont believe the Nats were truly in on Bryce. they offered 10/300 with all the deferments knowing Bryce would refuse. i question the Nats not getting under the lux tax number in 2018 when they were relatively close. if they were ever seriously in on Bryce, wouldn't it have been tremendously fiscally irresponsible to NOT get under that number and reset the lux tax?
I think I read this from on this blog, but I'm pretty firmly in the camp of the Nats did right by Harper by setting a market rate that he wanted ($300M for 10 minimum) while they got to save face with the fans and move on from Bryce thinking of him as a luxury rather than a core need with our current OF. It was a win/win for both, and a good way to split amicably. I loved watching him play here, but can't blame him for trying to earn the most he can at this job while playing for a team that should be competitive for a while to come. Good luck Bryce (except when you play us).
If only we 'd sign Kimbrel :(.
If the Nats weren't interested enough to give him a real offer without all that deferred money, then why didn't they move him at the trade deadline? What was the point of scrapping the deal to maintain the relationship, if they weren't going to make him a serious offer? If the deferred offer was a "test to gauge interest," as cronus says, then when Bryce said no, why didn't they come back with something more serious? I suppose we don't know all the details, but it sure seems like ownership played this very stupidly.
@Mr. T It's my understanding that Harper didn't come back. The offer was a starting point and if Boras hadn't misjudged the market and come back to the Nats and asked for $330M over 13 years back in August, Harper would be a Nat and Corbin would be a Yankee or Philthy. As it is, Harper didn't really come back to the Nats and they took it as a sign that he wanted to leave. Honestly, I think the Nats are better off. The Nats just can't afford both Harper and Rendon and Rendon is the better player who ironically will command less money on a shorter deal. So long as the Nats re-sign Rendon this is a good deal for them because the Nats are better with Corbin and Rendon over the next 5 years, then they would've been with Harper. They'll have one of the best outfields in the majors this year for somewhere around $10M and a much improved defense without Harper, Murphy and Wieters.
@JW I agree that ultimately they're better off not sinking that money into a single player. But, it would have been nice to have gotten a piece or two in exchange if we weren't gonna sign him. If Harper didn't come back after saying no to their initial offer, well, it seems like this is something that ownership might have anticipated and had a plan to deal with, once they decided they weren't going to trade him. Otherwise, their thinking seems to have been: "we can't trade him, he's the face of the franchise! Ok Face, here's a lowball offer. What's your counter--hey Face, where are you going? Oh well, sorry fans, we tried!"
@Mr. T - Yes, in retrospect, I wish they'd have traded him over the summer. Not sure what they were going to get from Houston, but it would've been something.
BX - Please stop with the "if's'. Stick with the what happened. He got hurt, it hurt the team but they still won at a .583 clip without him. He came back for the playoffs and was so bad he hurt the team. Last year he dogged his way through the season. It hurt the team. All of this is dialogue proving nothing. In the real world if the 2015 Bryce magically reappears the Phillies have made the steal of the century. If the 2016 - 2018 Bryce is who he has become, then this is a severe overpay. I will predict one thing, this Nats outfield will perform as one of the best in baseball in 2019. That's all you can ask them to do.
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