{"id":13220,"date":"2016-12-06T09:38:25","date_gmt":"2016-12-06T14:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=13220"},"modified":"2016-12-06T09:40:58","modified_gmt":"2016-12-06T14:40:58","slug":"winter-meetings-rumor-frenzy-and-an-unnecessary-bomb-dropped-on-the-nats-about-harper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=13220","title":{"rendered":"Winter Meetings Rumor Frenzy … and an unnecessary bomb dropped on the Nats about Harper"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"This<\/a>

This is what Harper may want his agent to do with a baseball right now. \u00a0 Or maybe not. \u00a0Photo GQ magazine Mar 2012<\/p><\/div>\n

Bryce Harper<\/strong> is not a Free agent for two more seasons. \u00a0So why the F is everyone writing glaring headlines about him right now??<\/p>\n

I thought the Bob\u00a0<\/strong>Nightengale<\/strong> article<\/a>\u00a0was a complete hack job against the Nationals, completely unnecessary and taking gratuitous shots at the organization over a situation that could go a dozen different ways between now and November, 2018 when he’s ACTUALLY a free agent. \u00a0And then the subsequent Jeff Passan<\/strong> article<\/a> that followed it a complete over-reaction, basically pulling one potentially innocuous quote out of Nightengale’s article to write a 1,000 words chastising the entire Nats organization. \u00a0Was it really that slow of a news day in the National Harbor that these were the stories that had to be written yesterday??<\/p>\n

I have never really liked Nightengale’s style of reporting; he was the one that trashed Adam LaRoche<\/strong>\u00a0earlier this year by quoting a bunch of unnamed members of the White Sox front office, essentially enabling them to write their version of the narrative of that situation without having to put their name on it, but the Passan article caused me to lose a bit of reporting respect for him too. \u00a0Passan’s passing judgement on the entire Nats organization by virtue of one anonymous quote from an unnamed Nationals Executive who commented that the Nationals were “not prepared” to meet a 10yr\/$400M contract.<\/p>\n

Here’s a thought: stop quoting anonymous people who probably just threw out a line passing you in the hallway, or who have an axe to grind and are too chicken-sh*t to put their name behind their words, and put some journalistic integrity behind your reporting.<\/p>\n

OF COURSE the Nationals are “not prepared” to meet a $400M contract demand. \u00a0Who is?? \u00a0Are the Yankees, given the massive luxury taxes now built into future CBAs? \u00a0Are the Dodgers, who just got told to cut their debts or risk further penalties? \u00a0Are the Cubs, who just won a World Series on the backs of a bunch of pre-arb sluggers and reasonably priced arms? \u00a0 What other organization in baseball has the financial where-with-all?? \u00a0Certainly not the Nationals, who (thanks to a short-sighted deal and a ridiculously argumentative owner in Baltimore) are stuck in one of the worst RSN deals in the majors and thus are missing out on literally tens of millions of dollars of revenue? \u00a0How does any team commit a quarter of their payroll to one player in the modern age, especially one that has shown himself to be as injury-prone as Harper?<\/p>\n

Harper\u00a0is a great player. \u00a0Is he worth being compensated as easily the highest paid player in the game? \u00a0Not in my book. \u00a0He’s not better than\u00a0Trout<\/strong> or\u00a0Kershaw<\/strong>. \u00a0He’s not nearly durable enough to merit that kind of commitment from a sane organization and that puts him behind some of his other compatriots right now (Manny Machado<\/strong> for example). \u00a0He’s a product of his headline inducing agent\u00a0Scott Boras<\/strong> and these two writers (well respected and nationally known) fell for it. \u00a0Again. \u00a0I’m sure he’ll get some ridiculous contract in 2018, but its no small secret that it probably won’t be the Nationals.<\/p>\n

Can we go back to arguing about whether we should be saving a 19-yr old who has never played above A-ball instead of acquiring a recent NL MVP<\/a> or a guy who has finished in the top 5 of Cy Young voting<\/a> five straight years??<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bryce Harper is not a Free agent for two more seasons. \u00a0So why the F is everyone writing glaring headlines about him right now?? I thought the Bob\u00a0Nightengale article\u00a0was a complete hack job against the Nationals, completely unnecessary and taking gratuitous shots at the organization over a situation that could go a dozen different ways […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[184,1164,164,426,442,1753,456,180],"class_list":["post-13220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonnatsbaseball","category-natsgeneral","tag-adam-laroche","tag-bob-nightengale","tag-bryce-harper","tag-clayton-kershaw","tag-jeff-passan","tag-manny-machado","tag-mike-trout","tag-scott-boras"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13220"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13224,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13220\/revisions\/13224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}