HARPER COULD BE TRUE MICK-STYLE YANK:
Bryce in pinstripes? He’s already got the heart of a Yankee
ON June 9, 2015, Bryce Harper was leading off the seventh inning of a 1-1 game, his first in the Bronx, when he took his Mickey Mantle obsession to such an extreme that he convinced a person working for the Nationals — then and now — that he would make good on all the pinstriped speculation.
“It really hit me that night,” the person said recently, “just how much it would mean to him to be a Yankee.”
Maybe you remember: in his previous at-bat against Masahiro Tanaka that night, Harper had blasted a home run, his league-leading 20th of the season, and yet in the seventh inning, facing Tanaka again, with a 1-2 count he tried to surprise the Yankees by dropping down a bunt.
Except he fouled off the pitch, meaning that Harper officially had struck out in a game the Nationals would eventually lose 6-1.
Everyone was shocked the slugger would take such a foolish risk, except perhaps for those familiar enough with Mantle’s career to know the legendary Yankee was a master of the two-strike drag bunt, reaching base that way several times a season early in his career.
“I knew right away why he did it,” the Nationals’ person said. “That convinced me he really wanted to live out the Mantle fantasy, whether it’s for his father or himself. At the time, I assumed the feeling would be mutual. But a lot has changed since then.”
It’s true; what once loomed as the lock of all locks, Harper signing with the Yankees, now appears to be more of a long shot as his highlyanticipated free agency awaits after this season.
At least that’s the sense I get after talking to various baseball people, including some with the Yankees, over the last few days as Aaron Boone’s ballclub prepares for a twogame series with Harper’s Nationals in Washington.
After all, with Aaron Judge in right field and Giancarlo Stanton likely to become more of an everyday left fielder next season, the Yankees have no obvious spot for Harper.
Though who’s kidding who? They could make it work if they really wanted to, by essentially having Harper, who hit his major-league leading 13th home run on Sunday night, replace Brett Gardner and rotate their outfielders in and out of the DH spot.
And scouts think Harper, as well as Judge, for that matter, could handle playing center field on an occasional basis, which would create the potential for the greatest slugging outfield of all time. There was a time, of course, when George Steinbrenner couldn’t have resisted such a possibility, no matter how this 2018 season plays out. And while Hal Steinbrenner pledges to want to win championships as much as his father, he has made it clear he doesn’t think it should take a $200 million-plus payroll to do so.
He might be proven right this season, because the Yankees, after so many years of having the highest payroll in baseball, rank just seventh among all ballclubs this season, under $170 million — at least until the trade deadline — thanks to the assembly line of young talent their farm system has produced in recent years.
And because the Baby Bombers have revived attendance and TV ratings, ending the fan apathy that came with the departure of the Core Four, Yankee people say Hal is thrilled these days with the business end of his ballclub, which is near and dear to his heart.
“Hal is a numbers guy at heart,” one Yankee person said, “and he takes great pride in having a more cost-efficient operation now, with all these kids who aren’t getting paid (big money) yet.
“He took on the Stanton contract because he recognized the box-office appeal of putting him and Judge in the same lineup, but he also loved the idea that he was making a great business deal.
“It cost nothing (in terms of top prospects) to trade for Stanton, and by getting the Marlins to take back ($30 million of the $295 million on the contract), Hal realized that paying him would cost a lot less than what it would take to sign Harper or (Manny) Machado as a free agent.”
In fact, the Yankees will be paying Stanton less than $25 million a year for another nine years, where baseball people predict that Harper and Machado, both at age 26 when they hit free agency, could command more than $35 million a year on contracts of 10-12 years.
Steinbrenner is also going to have to pay his young players, Judge, Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, etc., eventually, as they reach arbitration and head toward free agency themselves in the next few years.
And to win championships, the Yankees’ biggest need is more likely to be pitching than position players, so if they’re going to be active in free agency next winter, they’ll probably be more willing to spend on starters such as Charlie Morton, Dallas Keuchel or Patrick Corbin.
If anything, the Yankees seem more interested in Machado than Harper, depending on what they have in mind for Didi Gregorius, who is a free agent after next season.
And yet, having said all that, many of the same people downplaying the idea of Harper in pinstripes are quick to say they wouldn’t rule it out, depending how this season plays out with Stanton.
For one thing, scouts believe Stanton has enough holes in his swing that he could be very vulnerable in the postseason against elite pitching, especially the righthanded power pitching of the Astros.
“If something goes bad, I wouldn’t put it past Cash to trade Stanton to the Dodgers and convince Hal that Harper would be worth the money,” one rival executive told me. “With that lefthanded power, he’s really the perfect fit and they know how much he wants to play there.”
Harper has never hid his fascination with the Yankees, which goes back to his father passing along his love for Mantle to him as a kid growing up in Las Vegas.
A couple of years ago, Nationals’ broadcaster F.P. Santangelo told me the story of how Harper, having his hit his 13th and 14th home runs of his rookie season on the same night, couldn’t wait to tell people why that was so important to him.
“After the game,” Santangelo recalled, “the first thing he said to me was, ‘I passed The Mick tonight.’ “
Yes, Mantle hit 13 home runs in his rookie season of 1951. And, yes, Harper wears No. 34 because the
individual numbers add up to Mantle’s No. 7. Yet Tom Verducci, who first made Harper famous with his Sports Illustrated cover story on him at age 16, says the slugger is driven by more than wanting to simply live out a dream for him and his father, as Jason Giambi once did, wearing No. 25 upon signing with the Yankees because those numbers also added up to seven.
“No doubt there’s something to the Mantle thing,” Verducci said. “I remember him telling me how much he loved the “61*” movie years ago, and I know he has that connection with his father.
“But I actually think that in a perfect world he’d like to stay in Washington, because he’s gotten comfortable there. He’ll never settle for less than the best deal he can get, though, and I don’t know that the Nationals will pay him. “He’s not afraid of the spotlight — he loves it. He would not be afraid of New York — he’d embrace all of the attention. In some ways he’s tailor-made for the Yankees, because of his left-handed power and his personality. “I know that getting Stanton changed things, but I still don’t believe the Yankees are going to just sit on the sidelines when Bryce Harper T is available.” hat perception, right or wrong, will make for great intrigue all the way to next winter. Especially the next couple of nights in the nation’s capital.