The Nationals Do Not Expect Bryce Back, Say They Think He's Moved On
The Fan DC - Friday at Nationals Park was supposed to be about introducing Patrick Corbin to fans, but arguably the largest news item to come from the day wasn’t about Corbin at all.
Nationals managing principal owner Mark Lerner spoke with a finality not previously heard from Nats officials about free agent slugger Bryce Harper.
In an interview with Grant Paulsen and Danny Rouhier on 106.7 The Fan, Lerner was asked if the offer the Nats made to Harper was the only offer they would make, or if there’s still room to negotiate. The Nats offered Harper a reported 10-year, $300 million deal on the final day of the 2018 regular season.
“Well, when we met with them and we gave them the offer, we told them, ‘This is the best we can do.’ We went right to the finish line very quickly,’ Lerner said. “And we said, ‘If this is of interest to you, please come back to us and we’ll see whether we can finish it up.’ But we just couldn’t afford to put more than that in and still be able to put a team together that had a chance to win the NL East or go farther than that.”
“If they choose some other place, I totally understand,” he said. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime for Bryce and Kayla and their family. But we have no hard feelings about it, I must say. I love Bryce and he was a good teammate here. If he chooses to go some place else, I totally understand it, but we put one heck of an offer out there.”
Rouhier asked if Harper and his agent, Scott Boras, decided now that they’d be willing to accept Washington’s initial offer, “Is that now precluded based on what you guys have done and might do coming up?”
“It very well may be,” Lerner said. “We’ll have to sit down and figure it out. If he comes back, it’s a strong possibility that we won’t be able to make it work. But I really don’t expect him to come back at this point. I think they’ve decided to move on. There’s just too much money out there that he’d be leaving on the table. That’s just not Mr. Boras’ MO to leave money on the table.”
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Very, very interesting quotes from Mark Lerner today. Basically- the offer to Bryce is on the table. It’s out there. And the Nats organization has more than excepted that Bryce has likely moved on. It doesn’t mean he has ruled them out or anything like that, but the organization gets that Bryce very well may have already moved on.
And obviously that’s fine. If he can get more than 10 year, 300 million dollars elsewhere, that’s awesome for him. He’s put in the work and now is going to cash in. Whether it’s in DC, Chicago, New York, Philly or elsewhere, if the money is on the table, he’s going to take it.
And heck, maybe he will come back to the negotiating table with the Nats. Maybe he’ll be like “hey let’s go talk to them one last time, see what we can work out”. If you listened to that ARod interview on PMT, you’d know ARod was basically a member of the Boston Red Sox before he signed with the Yankees. Things happen on the negotiating table.
And hey, maybe this is some sort of play by the Nats to lure him back in? Like when you act as if you’re over your ex and moved on and they are like “hey what the fuck, you don’t get to move on til I say you can move on!” And then Bryce re-signs out of spite.