Free agent Harper, Nats at a crossroads
Via success, playoff disappointment, star and team have grown up together
WASHINGTON – On a recent evening at Nationals Park, the home team sought cover in the dugout as yet another weather delay disrupted a game. Most of the Nationals scurried with dispatch to shelter, but Bryce Harper slowed to a walk.
The heavy rain pelted his face, almost as if he wanted to feel the burn. He and left fielder Juan Soto were the last off the field, but the 19-year-old Soto shuffle-stepped eagerly into the dugout while Harper trudged in, perhaps drinking in the scene, perhaps feeling the burden of this past season.
Harper was like Soto once, a teenager setting bench marks for prodigious production, but now, still just 25, he and the franchise that grew up with him have arrived at a crossroad. It has been a highly productive but also paradoxical relationship: In Harper’s seven seasons, the Nationals have won four division titles, carving out an identity in the nation’s capital while seeing their franchise value rise from $480 million to an estimated $1.6 billion.
And Harper lived up to his billing, an All-Star every season but one, winning an MVP award, serving as ambassador for both his city and his sport and slugging, on average, 33 home runs a season.
Yet the objectively successful run has been tinged with disappointment: four gut-wrenching defeats in the National League Division Series. Two seasons that began with World Series aspirations but will end before the leaves turned. And a franchise that at times seems on the verge of inclusion in the game’s upper crust, only to wreak dysfunction by churning through four managers in six seasons.
Thursday, Harper begins what could be his final homestand as a National. Washington is 77-75, not yet eliminated but hopelessly behind the Braves, who will win an NL East Division that only the Nationals realistically expected to claim.
“As a franchise, we’ve done a great job of being where we’ve needed to be the last couple years, won a lot of games, just haven’t got past that first round,” Harper told USA TODAY. “Could possibly miss the playoffs this year. It’s part of it. We’re going to grow, we’re going to do the things we can do (to) be a better team. We’ve got a lot of great young talent. We’ll see what happens.” An entire industry awaits too. Harper’s free agency has been anticipated almost since he was a mere 16year-old with a preternatural ability to destroy baseballs. With agent Scott Boras riding shotgun, he’s widely expected to command a package whose total value will exceed Alex Rodriguez’s record $252 million and $275 million free agent contracts, along with Giancarlo Stanton’s $325 million extension in 2014.
Along with Manny Machado, Harper is the prize of a free agent class that has narrowed to a Big Two and Everyone Else; clubs such as the Yankees, Cubs, Dodgers and Giants have been saving money for this moment, while the Phillies, Braves and Cardinals have long had significant cash on hand.
Harper steadfastly has declined to discuss 2019 and free agency, and the Nationals are loath to reveal specifics of their plans or their dealings with Boras. Yet it’s safe to say no doors at Nationals Park will close on Harper after he walks off the field next Wednesday.
“He’s a player I’ve scouted since he was 15 years old,” Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo told USA TODAY. “We drafted, signed, developed and watched him turn into a superstar before our very eyes. He’s part of our family. And we’d love to have him long-term.
“I think the fan base loves him, and the Lerner family loves him, and I love him, so it would be less of a place without Harp than it is with him.”
Whether the relationship continues might hinge on the prism through which each side views the Harper era: a mutually prosperous period of sustained winning, or a frustrating sequence of expectations unmet.
A disappointing run
Rizzo inherited the GM job in 2009, the Nationals’ second consecutive 100loss season; he’s not about to quibble with heightened demands breeding occasional disappointment.
“Expectations big are a good thing,” he says. “We had it the other way here many years ago and that’s not any fun.”
Pitcher Stephen Strasburg and Har- per were the rewards for those grim years, consecutive No. 1 picks that gave the club an identity at a crucial time.
The winning soon followed, with a division title in Harper’s 2012 rookie year. The five-game NLDS loss to the Cardinals that followed was initially most notorious for Strasburg’s absence; Rizzo famously shut down the pitcher in his first season back from Tommy John surgery to preserve his long-term health.
Unfortunately for the Nationals, the narratives shifted from The Shutdown to the comedowns: a four-game loss to the Giants in 2014, and a pair of gutpunch Game 5 defeats at Nationals Park in 2016 and ’17 to the Dodgers and Cubs, respectively.
Those last two losses came on Dusty Baker’s watch, prompting an offseason decision to move on from Baker to rookie manager Dave Martinez. The implicit message: 95- and 97-win seasons meant nothing without playoff success.
It was hard to ignore the external narrative that the Nationals were unaccomplished playoff frauds and the internal expectation that playoff randomness was no excuse for October failings.
Certainly, a rash of injuries hurt. Yet injuries and unfortunate sequencing — when the Nationals couldn’t hit in April, their pitching shined, with the reverse true in July — happen to every club.
“You get on the wrong side of the mo- mentum coin and things start snowballing on you a little bit and the pressure builds and builds and builds, and it’s too late to fix,” says Blue Jays reliever Tyler Clippard, who speaks well of his time with the Nationals from 2008 to 2014. “That’s kind of what I feel like happened to them this year. They’re going to learn from it. I think everybody in that organization will. Moving forward, don’t take anything for granted.”
The future is now
Publicly, the Nationals and Harper have not taken the other for granted. He’s been effusive in his love for D.C., and the club has promoted his brand and created a space for him to flourish.
Only now will both sides put their cards on the table.
The Nationals suddenly have lots of holes to fill: at least two slots in the starting rotation and bullpen, a second baseman, a catcher. In a decision that will surely be made somewhere between the purview of Rizzo and managing principal owner Mark Lerner, the Nationals will weigh whether the $30 million or so annually to retain Harper could be better spent elsewhere.
And after rallying to produce a most improbable final year before free agency, Harper will get paid.
While his batting average languished as low as .213 as late as July 13, the power and patience were there all season — he’s second in the NL with 34 homers and has drawn a league-leading 123 walks. Harper’s caught fire overall in the second half, batting .304 with a 1.004 OPS to boost his season numbers to .247 and .894.
That hot streak came after Harper won the Home Run Derby in his home ballpark.
Being Bryce Harper often meant suppressing the teenager who first went viral with his “clown question, bro” rebuke of a reporter as a rookie; at times, it seemed, he relished the occasional role of provocateur. Perhaps that kid will reemerge once his forever home has been settled.
“I think he will,” Clippard says. “I feel like he’s doing a good job managing both superstardom and just playing the game of baseball every day. Those two things are a balancing act; it’s not easy.”
For Harper and the Nationals, the future came quicker than they imagined.