In depth breakdown of Bryce Harper’s shocking tell-all interview
By Ben Fadden
Bryce (wrongly) left the Nationals due to deferrals
Bryce Harper’s free agency was arguably the most anticipated free-agent period in Major League history, and it certainly helped Manny Machado was also on the market.
And boy did Bryce have some options. Let’s start with the Washington Nationals.
Harper said numerous times throughout this interview that he wanted to return to D.C. and at times believed it was going to happen but the deferrals in his contract really kicked that notion in the butt.
The first offer Harper received was not what he wanted. “It had $90 million in dropback money so it was like you’re gonna get paid until you’re 80 years old and I was like ‘I don’t want that’,” Harper recalled.
During the season he also was almost traded to the Houston Astros and would have been surprisingly all on board–if Washington would have actually talked to him about it.
“I didn’t know it until after the fact but they had a handshake deal with Houston at the time,” he said. “I wish they would’ve come up to me and talk to me about it because if they would’ve [talked to me], I would’ve been like ‘Guys look what just happened with Aroldis Chapman. They just got Gleyber Torres…Why not do that? We’re out of it, we have no chance, I will come out and say whatever you guys wanna [do to] make the organization look good. I don’t care…I’m totally for that.'”
Obviously that trade didn’t ever materialize and Harper would play his last game in a Nationals uniform in Colorado at the end of the 2018 regular season.
But that doesn’t mean Harper didn’t believe he was going back.
“I sat there with my wife and said ‘babe, we’re going back, I’m going back to D.C. if they offer me anything close [to my market value],” Harper remembers saying.
But Harper didn’t want deferred money and “wanted them to understand that.”
“If they would’ve deferred a little bit of it in the first three or four years I would’ve been fine because that means we can go out and get a [Patrick] Corbin and we’re good.”
“I got back an offer man and it hurt.,” Harper stated.
Harper is totally wrong here when it comes to the deferred money. It doesn’t make sense that he was willing to accept deferrals for the first three or four seasons of his new contract in order to let GM Mike Rizzo and the Lerner’s be able to build a winning team around him but then wasn’t willing to do it for the rest of his contract.
If he would have been on board with doing it the first four years then why not the last six or so years of his contract so that the Nationals would have been able to sign Patrick Corbin to the long term deal that he eventually got and retain both Stephen Strasburg and Anthony Rendon while saving up for Juan Soto‘s big payday.
If he wants to win that bad like I know he does, then taking that deal may have been smarter in terms of getting a championship (and likely multiple) rather than signing a bigger deal with Philadelphia with fewer deferrals and nowhere near the talent that Washington had in place.