Harper would have earned interest on those payments, but the money loses value over time thanks to inflation. This is in contrast to the Nationals’ reported 10-year, $300 million offer, which carried a higher average salary but included $100 million in deferred money, paying Harper until he was 62 years old. And the contract is reportedly front-loaded, meaning Harper will make more money earlier in the contract than later. Harper’s deal is the richest ever in terms of overall value, but it won’t make him one of the 10 highest-paid players in the game in terms of average annual value, bringing him in at around $25.4 million per year on average. The most interesting thing about Harper’s contract is its structure. So let’s unpack that number, and what it means in the context of the Phillies and baseball at large. That’s more money than 99.9 percent of human beings will ever make in their entire lives, and if your eyes don’t bug out a little at that figure, you should have your pulse checked. It’s perfectly reasonable to look at 13 years, $330 million and get sticker shock. Thirteen years is a long time-smartphones and Twitter have been around about that long-and $330 million is a gigantic number. The contract is a little more complicated than Harper’s on-field production. With Harper in the lineup, they’ll expect to win the division. With incumbent right fielder Nick Williams in the lineup, the Phillies were a sleeper pick for a playoff spot. Harper will be the Phillies’ best hitter, and their best position player overall, from the moment he pulls that red pinstriped jersey over his dress shirt at his introductory press conference. For all the discussion about Harper’s streakiness and last year’s weird defensive numbers, his impact as a player is fairly obvious in the short term. Harper’s agent, Scott Boras, was able to leverage that need into a $330 million contract. Realmuto, Segura, and McCutchen weren’t transformative additions on their own, but in concert with Harper, they’re a group that can turn an offensive inning into a half-hour-long conga line around the bases. More than that, adding Harper to the middle of the Phillies’ lineup transforms an offense that could look anemic in 2018 into a group that can score in bunches. The record-setting contract confirms that the Phillies are willing to spend what it takes to hold their own in a very competitive division. The Phillies had to have Harper, and now they do. ![]() After three years of spending barely more than half that, being outbid on both Machado and Harper would have amounted to a broken promise from ownership, a discontinuity between championship rhetoric and third-place financial commitment that’s become all too familiar across baseball. The Phillies, because of the size of their market and their share of exploding leaguewide revenue, ought to be running a payroll in the $200 million–a-year range at the very least. The Dodgers will probably make the playoffs without Harper, while the Giants are in the process of tearing down the remnants of the 2010-16 club so they can rebuild. The other two finalists for Harper-the Dodgers and Giants-are positioned differently. And after Machado signed with the Padres last week, Harper was the only cornerstone left. ![]() But they didn’t get their franchise cornerstone, and their overall payroll only rose to $125.5 million, leaving the club in more or less the same spot it ended 2018 in, only with increased expectations. They had the ability to spend stupid money, and with Harper and Manny Machado on the market, a great opportunity to spend it wisely.įor the first three months of the offseason, the Phillies signed solid complementary players in reliever David Robertson and outfielder Andrew McCutchen, and traded for shortstop Jean Segura and coveted catcher J.T. That’s $93 million under the competitive balance tax threshold and $71 million less than their peak expenditure in 2014. 500 last year, but even after lavishing multiyear deals on Jake Arrieta and Carlos Santana in the 2017-18 offseason, the Phillies’ payroll was just $104 million in 2018. The Phillies, a big-market team that ran a top-three payroll as recently as 2014, had assembled a talented core that included young homegrown players like Rhys Hoskins, Odubel Herrera, and Cy Young finalist Aaron Nola. The Ripple Effect of Bryce Harper’s Record-Setting Phillies Contract
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