Lucky isn't the right word. But the crowded free agent market Juan Soto currently has serves as a reminder of how fortunate the Phillies were that most of the usual suspects either were only halfway in or altogether sat out Bryce Harper's free agency after the 2018 season.
To be clear, Soto is a better free agent than Harper was. Not only did he just lead the New York Yankees to a World Series appearance, Soto won one in 2019 with the Washington Nationals. His contract year also kind of trounces Harper's.
Harper 2018: .249/.393/.496, 34 home runs, 100 RBIs, 130 walks, .889 OPS, -13 defensive runs saved, 3.2 WAR
Soto 2024: .288/.419/.569, 41 home runs, 109 RBIs, 129 walks, .989 OPS, zero defensive runs saved, 8.1 WAR
Nonetheless, Harper was 26 years old when he hit the open market, as Soto is now. After being selected No. 1 overall by the Nationals in the 2010 MLB Draft, Harper won NL Rookie of the Year in 2012, and NL MVP in 2015. He was already a six-time All-Star.
With that type of resume — even if Harper hadn't yet had a consistent string of excellent seasons like he has since joining the Phillies — it's kind of insane to look back on how little of a market there was for him.
The Yankees — a year after trading for Giancarlo Stanton — weren't really a factor in Harper's sweepstakes. Neither were the New York Mets, who hadn't yet been sold to Steve Cohen. The Boston Red Sox didn't make a play. Neither did the Chicago Cubs, despite Harper having talked about how fond he is of that city.
What competition did the Phillies have for Harper?
- The incumbent Nationals offered Harper a 10-year/$300 million deal, but the devil was in the details. Barry Svrluga of The Washington Post reported that it "included $100 million in deferrals and paid Harper until he was 60." Harper later admitted that he was "hurt" by the offer put forward by the Nats.
- The White Sox made a pitch, and Harper said he was intrigued by the Chi Sox. Although, it's fair to wonder if Harper would have trusted much-maligned owner Jerry Reinsdorf to consistently put a contending team around him.
- The Los Angeles Dodgers offered Harper a four-year/$180 million deal that would have allowed him to return to the open market when he was 30 years old, per MLB Network's Jon Morosi. We would later learn, though, Harper wasn't looking to plot his way back to free agency.
In Bryce Harper talks, I am told #Dodgers were willing to offer a four-year deal worth approximately $45 million per season. That would have allowed Harper to shatter the all-time AAV record and become a free agent at age 30. @MLB @MLBNetwork
- In the first offseason under president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, the San Francisco Giants were seemingly the runner-up for Harper, with Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area reporting that the Giants offered him a 12-year/$310 million contract.
Compare that to what is in front of Soto right now. The Yankees are all in. The Mets are all in. The Toronto Blue Jays — who seemingly finished runner-up for Shohei Ohtani last offseason — are at least going to make their pitch. The Red Sox had a "productive" meeting with Soto that lasted for three hours on Thursday, according to Sean McAdam of Mass Live.
The other difference between Harper's free agency is there's no debate that Soto is the top free agent available this offseason. There was a legitimate discussion to be had when Harper was a free agent whether he or Manny Machado — also a 26-year-old on a Hall of Fame trajectory — would be the better investment. Had Machado not also been a free agent after 2018, it's possible the San Diego Padres would have taken the resources they used to sign the third baseman to a 10-year/$300 million deal and been more serious pursuers of Harper.
Remember, for as highly as Harper has spoken about Philadelphia and its fans, it took him some time to warm up to the idea of joining the Phillies. He relished being a villain at Citizens Bank Park. Harper said as much to Jared Carrabis and Dallas Braden for Barstool Sports in a May 2020 interview.
“Philly came in. I’ll tell you, they came in and I wasn’t very excited. I was kind of like ‘I played against you guys,’ and I told them this flat out: ‘We kicked your ass for the past couple years.’ I flat out said that to them.”
“I remember walking away from that meeting like ‘I don’t know. I think they have a lot of good players…I think they have a great team…I love their fans.’ I mean going into that ballpark and knowing they hate me, I loved it. I absolutely loved it. They were so blue collar, they wanted you to play hard and I know that they respected the way that I played because you could feel it. And they could see that…they could feel that…but they hated my guts. And I loved that. And then it was funny because in 2018 we would go back in there and they loved me. They were like ‘Harp, come to Philly, dude! Go down Broad St., be our Nick Foles’ or whatever.”
Would Harper have ultimately come around on the Phillies if he had a market like what Soto does now where a bunch of other power brokers in the sport are at the table? It's fair to wonder.
For as perfect of a fit as Soto was with the Yankees this past year, Harper has always felt like someone that would have been able to make the seamless transition to donning pinstripes. Think about how many home runs he could have hit with the short porch in right field at Yankee Stadium.
Ultimately, it should be seen as one of the more inexplicable things in modern baseball history that so many clubs with deep pockets either were only tepidly in on Harper and/or Machado, or altogether sat it out. Maybe neither is Soto, but both are headed to Cooperstown and were only 26 when they hit the open market.
So were the Phillies fortunate not to have the same type of market emerge for Harper that seems to be developing for Soto now? Yes. Heck, maybe they were even a bit lucky.
