Bryce Harper Has Taken Years Off of My Life

Phillies fans like myself have had their eyes set on the 2018-19 offseason for a long time. Two of the MLB’s biggest young stars, Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, were both set to hit the open market at the age of 26. At the beginning of the offseason, Phillies owner John Middleton said that the team was prepared to spend a lot of money and “be a little stupid” – a term that looks like it could come back to haunt the Phillies if they don’t wind up signing either player. Machado signed a monster 10-year, $300 million deal with the San Diego Padres, so now the baseball world’s collective attention has turned toward Harper.

There have been a ton of different rumors regarding the Phillies’ relationship with Harper throughout the sweepstakes. The Phillies have been gambling favorites to sign Harper at varying points during the offseason, some people thought Harper took a private jet from his hometown of Las Vegas to the Phillies’ spring training camp in Clearwater, FL, and the Phillies are giving away American flag-themed arm sleeves (like the one that Harper wore during last year’s Home Run Derby) at a game during May. Middleton also spent this past weekend in Vegas, presumably talking to Harper and his agent, Scott Boras. So far, these rumors have resulted in pretty much nothing.

These rumors flying around everywhere have caused my trust in national reporters like Jon Heyman to plummet. Before the soap opera of this offseason, I knew Heyman as the guy with his bitmoji as his Twitter profile picture who sometimes got retweeted by the MLB and freaked out every time @OldTakesExposed pointed out one of his incorrect takes. Now I know him as Scott Boras’ puppet, tweeting about Harper’s suitors (including mystery teams) every time Boras needs a negotiating chip. Heyman has tweeted out a variation of the same *air quotes* “report” regarding Harper every day for what feels like a million straight days. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but he did tweet out the same thing with slightly tweaked wording nine times in one week. Seriously.

The latest big rumor is that the Dodgers are back in on Harper, trying to coax him with a short-term, high AAV deal that he said he wouldn’t go for at the start of the offseason. These rumors are starting to become white noise to me at this point. All I ask is that Harper signs somewhere, anywhere, soon. It’s March, Bryce. I need to know whether I can crown the Phillies as World Series champions yet, or if I need to find a way to spin the narrative to convince myself that the team’s just playing the long game and waiting to sign Mike Trout when his contract with the Angels is up.