It's not too soon for Nats to negotiate Bryce Harper's next deal
BOCA RATON, Fla. — Bryce Harper is 23 years old. He’s on the verge of winning his first National League MVP Award. In many ways, his career barely has begun.
Yet already the clock is ticking toward his seemingly inevitable free agency.
After the coming season, the Washington Nationals will retain only two years of control over Harper. That’s not much time to work out a long-term contract extension — particularly for a Scott Boras client.
If the Nationals want to keep Harper beyond 2018, their realistic window to do so will run out sometime around Opening Day 2017. At that point, Harper will be close enough to an astronomical free-agent payday that it probably won’t make sense to sign an extension.
In fact, the Nationals should push to sign Harper this offseason if they’re intent on keeping him in Washington. To that end, on Tuesday I asked Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo how important it is to sign Harper for the long term by Opening Day 2016.
“Before Opening Day?” Rizzo asked in response. “We want Bryce to be here for a long, long time. He’s a guy I’ve seen play forever, it seems — since he was 14. He’s a guy we drafted, signed, developed, and he’s turned into an MVP-type player for us.
“We love the guy. We’ve got him locked in for the near future. We certainly would love for him to be a National for life.”
So, knowing that Boras encourages his high-end players to establish their value on the open market, is there urgency to complete the deal before the two-year window immediately preceding free agency?
“We’ve got him for the near future,” Rizzo answered. “I think he likes being in D.C. He likes playing for the Nationals. He loves the city of D.C. I think that bodes well for us.”
We’ll see. Rizzo certainly didn’t give the impression that he’s in the midst of talks with Boras on an extension for Harper. Perhaps he was being coy, but I doubt it.
Two relevant points here:
1. Harper and Mike Trout were anointed as the new faces of baseball in 2012, and since then Trout’s career has been the greater success — judging by paychecks and production. Trout has a six-year, $144.5 million contract with the Angels through 2020. Harper, meanwhile, is entering the final year of a two-year, $7.5 million extension signed last December in lieu of a grievance hearing with the Nationals.
Surely that financial chasm gnaws at Harper — one of the most confident, competitive people in baseball. So how motivated do you think he is to double Trout’s money and surpass Giancarlo Stanton’s $325 million mark for the largest contract in North American professional sports?
2. Harper loves the spotlight and wants to become an American sports icon, not merely the best player in baseball. The chance to sign with the New York Yankees, then, could prove irresistible for him.
By the time Harper enters free agency, the contracts of Alex Rodriguez, CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira, and others will be off the Yankees’ books. In fact, Masahiro Tanaka and Jacoby Ellsbury are the only current Yankees with guaranteed deals for 2019 — at a total sum of roughly $43 million.
If the Yankees spend judiciously between now and then — as they insist they will — they should have plenty of room in a $200 million annual payroll for someone capable of earning a place in Monument Park.
