Chelsea Janes and Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post reported yesterday that the Washington Nationals made an “aggressive” contract offer to free agent Bryce Harper. The offer was reportedly for roughly $300 million over a ten-year span. How much of that was deferred, backloaded or what have you is unknown. The offer reportedly came late in late September.
As with all reports like these, it’s worth appreciating that someone may have an incentive to put this out there. In this case, I suspect, the Nationals, to signal to fans that they made an effort to lock Harper up before he was able to negotiate with teams other than Washington. Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but just how specifically good or bad the deal was is not something we can know. Either way, it’s worth noting that Giancarlo Stanton’s 13-year, $325 million contract is the largest in the game at the moment and that Harper and his agent, Scott Boras, are likely looking for something that has more guaranteed money than that.
Will he get it? No idea. But he’s way more likely to if he negotiates on the free market, so it makes sense that Harper rejected the offer.