Phillies sign Bryce, That’s Nice

March 1st, 2019 by Leo | Filed under Baseball, General, MLB, Phillies.

After months and months of talk here in the Philly area about signing Bryce Harper, finally the Phillies and Bryce signed a contract! The contract is for 13 years and $330 million dollars and Harper, 26, will be 39 when this contract runs out.  But the $25 million AAV of the deal means Harper could possibly be traded at some point in his career. After the announcement of the signing the Phillies sold over 100,000 tickets already for the upcoming season.

Harper has dominated the NL East throughout his career. He’s hit 96 home runs in his career vs. NL East opponents, with an OPS of .909.  In Harper’s 50 career games at Citizen’s Bank Park, he has a .930 OPS with 14 home runs.  With the most home runs being hit in Citizen’s Bank Park, that should mean the Phillies and the fans will have a lot to cheer about in the upcoming years. One thing that seems odd is a no opt-out in the contract, the Boras deal doesn’t have any opt-outs for the player or the Phillies.  Considering Boras typically adds that into the deals, you begin to wonder what actually happened behind closed doors while negotiating the contract.

Why did it take so long? Not really sure other than he was holding out for a better deal even though a lot of people felt deals of this magnitude as “stupid money”.  There are some concerns with Harper’s career so far, he has missed time with injuries, he’s amounted to fewer than 2.0 bWAR in three of his seven big-league seasons. Harper has had inconsistent defense and he struck out a career-high 169 times in 2018.

It should be interesting to see how Harper is received in Washington this year and what other moves the Phillies will make in their bid to win the NL East.  If you would like to check out Harper’s stats you can see them on the Baseball Reference site.  By signing the biggest contract ever you know he made some kind of history, Harper surpasses Giancarlo Stanton for total contract value.  Stanton signed a $325 million extension with the Miami Marlins but Harper will probably hold this title for quite some time.

Some other notable links to brush up on your Harper stats and information, here is a list:

Harper’s Twitter page – https://twitter.com/bharper3407

Harper’s MLB.com page – https://www.mlb.com/player/bryce-harper-547180

Harper compared to other MLB contracts – https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/compensation/cots/

Bryce Harper Videos – Listing on Yahoo

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