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Let's pretend for a moment that his name isn't Bryce Harper. Let's call him Glenn Strider instead. I once started writing a baseball novel, and it was absolutely terrible, and there's nothing worth saving from it ... except my protagonist was a ballplayer named Glenn Strider, and I think that's...
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Bryce Harper probably would have more success with a scene change, maybe even changing leagues. I don’t know much about his issues, including what his bat speed is currently, but he does strike out a lot (looking? swinging? I don’t know) along with all his walks (his best stat?). Seems like I would want a guy who has more of a history of putting the ball in play, especially late game, if I’m paying him $30M/Yr for a decade – and all that money will put even more pressure on him. Looking at his Statcast stats I don’t see anything that is topping the charts either.
Hard pass.
This is a great idea! That said, I don’t think the comparison quite works because players who make MLB at such a young age, especially those who play as well as Harper DO tend to become superstars. Then with that 2015 season, and the 2017 first half, I feel just about the way I do now with Harper: Glenn Strider should be a superstar.
But Harper has had enough years in his career by now that I don’t think we should take much stock in the “he won RotY at 19!” stats anymore. The reason that 19-year-old phenoms tend to be destined for the Hall is because then they take the next step and are spectacular from ages 22-25. Harper has struggled to do that, and that’s why his future as a superstar is very much in doubt. It would be interesting to see stats on players who were as good as Harper was at ages 19-20 but then weren’t any better from ages 21-25. My guess is the A-Rod (for example) comparisons start going out the window.
A win will be worth probably around at least $6M dollars over the next 10 year period (luxury tax turning into a salary cap and possible stoppage could change that). That means that on baseball terms we are asking him to be a 5 WAR player a year. Over his first 7 years, he has averaged around 4 WAR. He is theoretically entering his prime years and should exceed that. That is why it is a gamble. If he has even just three years around 2015 plus his normal numbers, the contract is worth it. I am not worried about his bat but his defense and health. His defense killed his numbers last year. Is that a blip or a fact of life? Should he go to an AL team and be a JD Martinez. JD is making $24M for similar offensive numbers (before last year). Angels would be fun.
How are you seeing Martinez’s and Harper’s offensive numbers as similar? J.D.’s are vastly superior.
I use OPS+. I was looking at the three years prior to JD’s signing (because that is why the Sox gave him $24M) so 2015, 2016 and 2017. JD’s OPS+ are 139, 142 and basically 165. Harper’s are 198, 114 and 156. JD’s career OPS+ is 138. Harper’s career OPS+ is 139. JD’s are trending the right way while Harper is all over the place. You could argue that Harper’s outlier year skews his numbers but overall their numbers are pretty close. JD has three bad years at the beginning of his career while Harper has spread around his three bad years.
I think it’s safe to assume that the Martinez of 2011-2013, six to eight years ago, is not the Martinez of 2018-19. In any case, he has greatly superior numbers to Bryce for the last year, two years, four years, back to five years. Anyway, his total current contract is for about $110M (I think), and Bryce is asking for three times that. Which is absurd… but Martinez may be underpaid. I really wanted the Astros to sign and DH him.
Not my money, so why not sign Harper. I thought you were the peak guy. There have been only 184 seasons of 10 WAR and he has one.
Just trolling you a bit. I am pretty happy with my team’s right fielder and DH (hello JD).
Can’t agree more David, the Angels would be fun. Can you imagine Harper hitting behind Trout? The potential is for the two of them to have seasons the likes of which … lets just say my mind is boggled. And playing next to Trout in the outfield might be just the thing to make Harper fully commit to the bit.
Harper is young to the point that he has yet to enter what has been seen as a batter’s prime years. Playing 150 plus or minus a year, with 20 days DHing, I’ve gotta believe would keep him fresh and productive through age 32 anyway.
Also, if the Angels do want to keep Trout how better to demonstrate a real commitment to winning than to run out and grab the one player available who has demonstrated an ability to put together a truly dynamic season?
Pujols is a sunken cost now. I think even with Harper they are below the threshold. That outfield would be awesome. Upton would be your third outfielder. Possibility for a 25 outfield alone. Arte just needs to sell some more billboards. Imagine how the Dodgers would fume would be awesome too (as the son of a Brooklyn dad).
The Dodgers are a vastly superior team to the Angels, so not sure why they would be fuming about the Angels doing anything. Most likely they barely know the Angels exist except for Trout. I like the Dodgers OK, but hope they sign Harper for $300M+, so they have less chance of being a contender in the upcoming years.
I did not mean solely in actual good teams. LA is about stars. Besides Kershaw, who is really a big name for casual fans. Moreno tried it once with Pujols but did not work. You pair Harper with Trout and Angels can pitch it as Mantle and Maris. Catch lightning in a bottle and make a playoff run and the Angels are relevant.
When you pair Harper with Trout, you are also pairing Harper with Pujols. If it does not work out, you have two of the top-10 worst contracts in baseball, though now Pujols is sliding down that list with fewer and fewer years left to run. And from 2013 (Pujols) to 2020 (Pujols and Harper) to 2025-26 (Harper), the Angels continue to occupy a place on the annual worst-baseball-contracts list.
If Harper is really so reluctant to play for the Phillies, it seems crazy of them to still pursue him and offer him top dollars when most others have decided he is not worth the risk. The Phillies do not seem to have access to the algorithm that generates same contract on the same day from 4-5 teams to the same player.
San Diego Padres are said to be still in on Harper if chips fall right. But I am sure there is zero chance that they pay him more than $300M if Boras insists on it. They are not going to antagonize Machado within days of signing him by making somebody else (not named Mays or Mantle or Trout) the highest paid star on the team.
In the three years after he won the MVP, Harper has a .391 OBA and .505 SLG, good for a 897 OPS and 133 OPS+. I’m too lazy to look up the three year numbers for the league, but both that OPS and OPS+ would have been top ten in his league last year. Despite being dinged up, he has averaged 605 PAs per year, 29 HRs, 91 ribbies and 94 runs. Again, this excludes his MVP season.
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His WAR last year was not very good at all. But a ton of that is an out of norm defensive rating. For his career up to 2018, he averaged a bit more than +6 for the fielding component of bWAR pro rated to his 2018 playing time. But in 2018, he was -26. Certainly some of that could be real, but we all know defensive stats tend to fluctuate even more than do hitting ones mostly because it is really, really difficult to know if a particular ball in play really had a 40% chance of being caught or a 60% chance. So I’d regress that -26 much of the way back to his career norms which would show bWAR in the 3-4 range
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Bryce Harper has a couple of problems. 1) He was too good (and maybe too handsome) with too much publicity early on; we want our heroes to struggle and seem more like one of us. 2) He isn’t a high average hitter; we can talk ’til we are blue in the face about the greater importance of OBA vs. BA, but when it comes down to it, we just can’t see a star player hitting under .250 which Harper has done two of the last three years. And 3) he isn’t as good as Mike Trout.
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I really wish the team I rooted for would sign him.
Actually, defensive numbers are extremely stable and predictable: for almost everyone, they are their highest from a player’s debut until about age 26, then they take a quick and large decline. Bryce may not be putting up many more -26’s, but he’ll probably post -5 to -10, and it’s a good bet that he’ll be lots below average over the rest of his career.
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You’re basically arguing that Bryce is not a bad player. Well, he isn’t. But he sure as hell isn’t a $300M player.
Yes, defensive stats are very stable … which is why the -26 is out of place. He has basically been in a pretty tight range very close to 0 plus/minus after his first season. Going from that to -26 is either a data glitch or an injury.
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No, I’m saying he is a top 10 hitter, playing a middle of the spectrum defensive position, as a 26 year old. That may not be Mike Trout, but it is a very, very, very valuable commodity. I don’t know the internal financial data from MLB or its teams, but seeing that we are well over a decade since we had our first $25M player, and there are already at least 7 players with $30M annual salaries, I do think that Harper is a 10y/$300M player.
He is not close to being a top 10 hitter. I think you got confused by his ranking at #10 *in the NL* last year. He wouldn’t have made the top 10 in the AL. He’s about the #25 hitter.
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Do you honestly think he’s going to be an above-average defender over the next ten years? How much WAR do you think he’ll put up in the next 10 seasons?
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Giving $300M to a guy who’s been a BELOW AVERAGE player in two of the last three seasons is just bat-shit crazy. 🙂
If he’s playing that defensive position badly, though, then it doesn’t really help you that he’s lining up there.
I wouldn’t want my team to touch Bryce Harper (or Glenn Strider) with a 10 foot pole.
The single biggest difference between Bryce Harper and Glenn Strider is the contract expectations. Bryce Harper, being who he is, has expectations of a long term deal at $30M+ per year. Glenn Strider would probably be forced to accept a contract about half the length, and probably at 1/2 to 2/3 the money, at best. Nolan Arendado just got a contract for 8/260 (supposedely), that will take him to about age 36, but he’s at least been consistently very good, and hasn’t had the injury history.
Arenado has been an actual elite player, in contrast to Harper, but the Rockies just screwed their future with that deal. Arenado probably peaked in 2017. A ton of his value has been in his defense, and that defense already started to slip last season, and he’ll most likely never be an elite defender again. I’d bet he never tops 6 WAR again, and probably becomes a below-average player in about four years. That’s still very good performance over eight years, but it’s not worth $30M/year. With one caveat: their division is crap after the Dodgers, so they have a good shot at making the playoffs at least twice over the next four years, and they probably can’t make the playoffs without Arenado.
This is part of the reason why I ignore some of these advanced stats. Just looking at raw stats, it appears that his range is down a bit, but errors, double plays, fielding percentage all seem to be in line with his career numbers.
What bothers me is this: It appears that BR has 2 defensive calculations listed, Total Zone and BIS (do they use both?) From what I read, it appears that Total Zone is saying it was his best defensive year based on runs saved. BIS says it was, by far, his worst year on defense. BR says it was his worst year for defense; Fangraphs has it above average. So …. which is it?
Errors and fielding percentage are pretty meaningless, though. If you just stood in place as a shortstop and only fielded balls that were hit right at you you’d probably have 0 errors and a 1.000 fielding percentage but you’d still be a horrendous shortstop.
Range is almost all that matters for an outfielder. I guess these days the ability to play where the analysts tell you to play might be important if some players won’t do it.
I’m going to generally agree with you that the contract is potentially a killer. But Arenado is producing offensively, and it’s possible that last year’s defensive downturn is just a blip. I do expect they’ll get 3-4, maybe 5 good years from him. That, unfortunately, leaves them with about 4 decline years. That makes the contract a bad one.
I sometimes wonder why someone like Harper doesn’t go for a shorter term contract as a way to maximize career earnings. Why not do 3 years/$125M? Then re-up at age 29. I think teams would be way more likely to offer upwards of $40M/year for a shorter contract. I get why they want the long term deals, but I’m somewhat surprised that a young guy with a healthy ego doesn’t bet on himself and take a shorter contract for more money per year. It not only gives them a healthy annual income, but it also gives them a lot of flexibility about their playing situation. If it’s working out, sign another contract. If it’s not, move on to where you’d rather be. I think a lot of guys sign long term deals and end up playing for teams that aren’t really competing as the contract progresses. I don’t expect most players to chase shorter team deals, but I’m surprised that almost nobody does it unless their value has dipped and they’re looking to play themselves back into a bigger contract. For example, Josh Donaldson signed the 1 year/$23M deal. But obviously he wouldn’t have done that if he’d been a healthy MVP level player the last couple of years.
Right. If Harper (and Boras) really believed that he was one of the top 20 (or so) players in baseball, taking a short contract to prove it would make sense. I’m super interested to see how Donaldson does this year. As a Braves fan, I’d be upset if his contract was a long-term one, but for just one year, I’m happy with it. Except that I worry that the team might not give Camargo a full season somewhere. He had a pretty great year last year and deserves it. But I haven’t followed it closely and maybe they’ve announced a plan to give both guys a full season.
Joe’s line about baseball “having a big problem” — he may be right, but I don’t think Harper’s free agency reflects that. The fact that Harper has not signed is 50% on him/his agent. A problem would be if nobody had offered him a reasonable contract, but all reports indicate that he has been offered huge contracts, but not record breaking ones. If he’d have signed with the Nationals at 10 years/$300 million, we would not be “worried” about the FA marketplace, I don’t think.
I think there’s a big disconnect between the owners and the players. Teams have generally figured out by watching several huge, long contracts that have not aged well (ARod, Prince, Pujols, Cabrera to name a few) that those are terrible deals for the teams, especially if signed in the late 20’s/early 30’s. Harper is obviously younger than that, but has nowhere near the track record any of the above had, either. If I were a team, I could see offering big money, but I’d want it to be on a short deal. Arenado and Machado are getting paid, but have been more consistent and injury-free than Harper.
Teams are merely making better business decisions, which I don’t see as a problem.
There’s a big disconnect between the players and reality. 🙂
I do believe that quite a bit of the expectations for Harper are connected to his name. He was a phenom before he was even drafted, and he was drafted 1-1. Baseball (teams and fans and media) love the potential for greatness, and he showed his ability to reach that potential in 2015 with a 10+ WAR season.
But in the last three years, he is 86th among hitters in WAR. This means teams on average have 3 players who have averaged more value the last three years than Harper. The players just above him are Scooter Gennett and Adam Eaton, the players just below are Ben Zobrist and Dustin Pedroia. Due to injuries (mainly Eaton and Pedroia) and age (Zobrist and Pedroia are past their primes) these four players have averaged nearly 400 less PAs than Harper over that time. (Though the article mentions injuries, Harper has averaged 605 PAs the last three years) Harper has more seasons that he failed to reach 2 WAR than seasons where he reached 5.
By contrast, Manny Machado, the other name free agent this year, is 10th in WAR over the last three seasons, just behind Freddie Freeman and Christian Yelich, and just ahead of Paul Goldschmidt and Kris Bryant. He is in an entirely different neighborhood. Any team who pays Harper the money Machado got based on his name is a foolish team that will deserve what they get.
I think this is exactly why other guys are getting signed and he’s not. An analytics department isn’t missing what he has actually done over the past three years. I don’t think you’ll see too many more Dontrelle Willis, Andrew Jones or BJ Upton signings that ignore the fact that the recent results don’t live up to the player’s hype.
I think there are really two questions. First, how Harper? Certainly he has a lot of skill and has shown more than potential. The next question is whether what he’s shown is worth a 10 year/$325M contract. I don’t see how any organization can possibly say yes. Even at age 26 in 2019, you’re going to be paying him until age 35. So you would have to factor in at least 3-5 decline years into that contract. That’s 30-50% of the contract. In order to consider that, you’d have to be pretty sure that the first 5, at least, were HOF level years that would put you into 2-3 World Series. It also assumes that you’d have the team around him to actually compete for a World Series. In short, you’d have to believe that this move would get you a couple of championships. I believe only about 1/3 of the teams could have a sane belief that they are actually capable of a World Series win. Bottom line: it would be a very large bet. If you’re the GM and you miss on this one, you won’t have a job. As a GM, I’d certainly want him on my team, but at nowhere near the number of years he’s asking. 5 years/$175M, yes. 6 years/$210M, maybe. 7-10 years, no. Certainly not 10 years/$325M. That’s stupid money that’s very likely not going to work out.
If Harper plays out his contract, his last years will come at ages 36-37-38. Pujols’ WAR over those 3 years is 1.3, -1.8, 0.5. Miguel Cabrera had a -ve WAR in his age 34 season. Have players always fallen off that badly once past 35, except the steroids era players? Babe Ruth was at 10+8+6 (WAR of 24 over those 3 years), indeed any player with career WAR above 90 would have to do well late into his career; recently Beltre has done well in his late 30s but the accepted wisdom is that a player is toast once past 35. The Phillies will have 25M tied up in Harper (AAV) even in 2031. There may be no luxury tax limit at all by then; then again, the limit could endure and could get tighter if baseball continues to lose attendance and tv revenue plummets.
Reading baseball columns about players who are dragging down their club are great fun to read. I hope Harper’s contract bombs from day one, and if he fails to have WAR over 3 in each of his first 3 seasons, I would be happy. Posnanski is running a poll on ‘chances Harper finishes his career with Phillies’. I would like to see a poll as to when Harper makes it to the list of Ten Worst Baseball Contracts, and would like to see him make that list this year itself. His performance over last 3 years does not justify this contract.
At the same time, it is true that smart people like Andrew Friedman and Zaidi were willing to pay Harper huge sums of money. The Dodgers’ AAV of 45M over 3 years is a great offer to get. We shall see how the contract unfolds.
It certainly is already one of the ten worst contracts. I mean, it has to be, right? Especially since if the Phillies had saved their money for a couple of years, they could’ve had a good chance at Trout!
The Phillies may still go after Trout. Harper could have a few monster years and shut us sceptics up, but it is more likely that by 2024 the Phillies can pay Trout a huge sum and it will be time to eat some of Harper’s salary and trade him to some other dummy.
I would like to see both Trout and Harper on 10 worst contracts list in 2024, but at least Trout’s past would have justified paying him a ransom.
Trout’s a free agent after 2020. In 2024 he’ll be well into the largest contract in sports history for a team that isn’t the Phillies :). Maybe the Yankees?
Yes, I meant Trout and Harper play together in 2021-22-23. And by then Harper is bad enough that he and the Phillies look for separation. It is not certain that the Phillies won’t get Trout, even after committing lot of money to Harper.
Harper is a dummy who went for the top dollar from a team he very likely did not like. But Trout is said to be a Phillies fan, the team’s and the area’s.
So long as Trout avoids major injury, failed drugs test, and a very abrupt drop in performance, AND hits free agency, the bidding for him will be truly crazy. I hope it will drag on till 3/20; that will make for some good fun. As somebody who likes to see turbulence rather than sustained performance, etc, it will add to the fun and intrigue if Trout produces only 3-4 WAR each of coming two years. How will the teams approach him then? WAR of 1.3 in free agency year clearly does not deter teams if there is enough hype surrounding a player.
Bryce Harper is close to falling off a cliff. He will be like a bum on the street.
The first bum ever with four hundred million dollars in his wallet. Except for Dan Ackroyd in Trading Places.
Of course he will blow it all.
Bryce Harper’s new jersey number is 3, the same as Iverson and Babe Ruth. His number with the Nationals was 34, which was Halladay’s number in Philadelphia.
This probably means that he passed his physical today and satisfied his new club that he can be reasonably expected to play 120 games every year, a number he has reached in as many as 3 out of past 6 seasons. That is awesome.
I want to say that although I’ve demeaned the idea of paying Harper so much money, I have seen him a lot on TV and enjoy watching him play, and I hope he does well and puts up at least a few more 5 WAR seasons. My favorite Bryce moment is probably when he charged the mound and punched that SF reliever, who really had it coming. Anyone remember that? I watched it live, probably on MLB Network.
We are already seeing a decrease in the type of crazy contracts baseball handed out to Pujols, Prince Fielder, ARod (2007), Ellsbury, Sandoval. I would like to see the trend continue, and one way it will continue is when stupid contracts flop, and flop miserably. I would like to see a rule preventing a team from just cutting a player and eating his salary. If you sign Hanley Ramirez for N years and Harper for 13, unless you can trade him he must remain on the roster so long as he is not injured. But this suits neither Selig-Manfred, nor Tony Clark and shall not come to pass.
Bill james once wrote that if you cut Rickey Henderson in two, you will get two hall of famers. It would be great if Harper could be cut in two, and join both the Phillies and the Dodgers, and ruin them both. If the other, cleverer signs by the Phillies have to bomb for it to happen, so be it. When a club can afford to pay stupid money to players like Harper or David Price, the chances are that even on an overall failed contract, their talent can tell on occasion in crucial situations and help their club. That is what happened with David Price in 2018. I would like to see Tampa Bay, Oakland, Milwaukee win championships instead of the Red Sox, the Yankees, the Phillies, the Cubs, and the Dodgers.
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