Three hundred million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool?
Well, we’ll soon find out.
Bryce Harper, who has been waiting for this offseason since he was a teenager, turned down a chance to sit it out. At the close of the season, the Nationals made a last-ditch attempt to thwart his free agency by handing over a deal for 10 years and roughly $300 million, according to the Washington Post. He passed.
The pact, while eye-popping, did not include opt-outs, according to the report. And it would not have been record-setting; Giancarlo Stanton’s $325 million contract tops it in total, and Zack Greinke’s $34.4 million per year is the highest average. For the Harper hunters, they will need to break both the bank and precedent — especially with Scott Boras doing the negotiating.
“We’ve had conversations and we utilized our exclusivity to negotiate with him late in the season through when he became eligible to sign with a team,” Nationals GM Mike Rizzo told reporters at the general managers’ meetings Tuesday. “We didn’t get anything done, but he’s a guy that is near and dear to us and we are not closing any doors.”
Harper, a 26-year-old six-time All-Star, will be dueling with Manny Machado for the biggest contract of the offseason and probably in baseball history. If an on-base-machine outfielder with 184 home runs in seven seasons doesn’t fit into a team’s mold, he’s willing to transform himself; Boras said Tuesday that Harper can play first base, too, for a team (the Yankees) with a need there.
As Boras flirts with other teams, the Nationals — a $300 million check still uncashed — are in limbo.
“It’s going to be a challenge to put the best product on the field, and that could include Harper and it could be doing things without Harper,” Rizzo said. “There is a reality that we would love to sign him, but we may not. We have to have a strategy and plan put together to win baseball games, not only for 2019 but beyond. I think we have a good strategy in place, a good plan in place, and we have started to begin that process and we will see where it takes us.”
