The Philadelphia Phillies may have a new unofficial member of the front office in Bryce Harper.
Here’s an emerging MLB reality: With a big money contract comes an unofficial front office role. I nearly put a question mark at the end of that sentence, and maybe it still belongs, but the Philadelphia Phillies right fielder Bryce Harper now seems to be talking as though he has an office in the executive suite instead of right field.
As reported by NBC Sports Philly writer Jim Salisbury June 17, Harper has now weighed in on the third significant topic regarding the Phillies roster since mid-February. His most recent opinion has to do with pitching prospect Spencer Howard, who is widely expected to make his MLB debut sometime this truncated season.
Harper “announced” he feels Howard should be in the Phillies rotation by the sixth game of the season. With this brief delay, this season, the team apparently would retain rights to Howard for a year beyond the point they would if they didn’t. Despite never pitching above Double-A, the right-hander is the consensus top Phillies farmhand starter.
This is quite specific advice, however, and one has to wonder how new manager Joe Girardi and GM Matt Klentak are taking Harper’s unofficial executive declarations.
One hopes, actually, that they are taking them with a grain of salt because all three of Harper’s recent opinions seem products of sound thinking about what his team should do in planning for the next decade.
Let’s review Assistant GM Harper’s earlier recommendations, however. Back in February, the power-hitting right fielder explicitly opposed trading away Howard and infield prospect Alec Bohm, another power-hitter, for Cubs star Kris Bryant.
At the time his reasoning was interesting: Some guys on the team have to make less than some others, which is fairly obvious, but never quite stated so baldly. This is, he argued, because you may need money to acquire people at the trade deadline. Along the way, of course, Harper praised Bohm as a “big-time third baseman.”
Quite the diplomat, huh? Certainly, he’s more diplomatic than the last self-anointed leader, Jake Arrieta.
One writer at the time remarked, “Harper sounds like a member of the Phillies front office with this answer rather than a player who wants to win in the near-term.”
A great number of people may not recall these remarks by Harper, or the attendant commentary, because over 135,000 Americans have died swiftly since the player made them, and other fans have been very, very ill.
Anyway, after that, it was widely reported Harper definitely supports the re-negotiation of All-World catcher J.T. Realmuto’s contract before he becomes a free agent after the coming Phillies sprint for the playoffs finish line this summer.
Among the subtle signals the Phillies outfielder sent to his fellow front office thinkers was his Realmuto t-shirt, which he wore an awful lot in practice, and said he had been wearing for quite a while because it was comfortable.
So, the clearly begging question is: How much influence does Bryce Harper have on his club’s personnel decisions?
That’s what happens when a team signs a human being for 13 years and over $300 million dollars. That human assumes he gets an opinion.
Moreover, the Phillies have seemed to follow Harper’s instincts in February about Howard and Bohm.