This isn’t about the AAV (average annual value) of Bryce Harper’s new contract, which is something that really only makes agents and insiders so lightheaded they need to lie down. And there is so much happiness in Philadelphia now that Phillies fans don’t want to hear that the only other time a team gave a young star a contract for 13 years -- Marlins, Giancarlo Stanton -- the team and player were no longer in business with each other after three. The Phillies got their guy. That is all their fans care about.
Phillies fans feel the same way fans of the Padres felt when their team signed Manny Machado. The difference, of course, is this: The Phillies have a much better chance to win right now. The Padres bought hope with Machado. Phillies fans honestly believe their team might have bought its way into its first World Series title since 2008.
So Harper, making the short trip from Washington, D.C., to Philly, makes the baseball season a lot more interesting for his new team. But he does something else by leaving the Nationals for the Phillies: He makes the National League East the most interesting division in baseball, which means even more than the American League East as we all await another Ultimate Fighting Championship between the Red Sox and the Yankees.
This deal also creates a great big new rivalry between the Phillies and the Nationals in such a big way, because the Nationals lose their star and the Phillies get him. And by the way? Nobody has to wait very long for it to commence, as the Phillies have a two-game series at Nationals Park that begins on Tuesday night, April 2.
We keep reading and hearing what a “generational” player Harper is, more than ever now that he’s gotten this kind of money and this many years with the Phillies. At 26, he’s going to get the chance to prove that in Philadelphia, and for a long time, even if he is hardly a generational player yet. He is sure going to get a chance to hit a ton of home runs in a ballpark, Citizens Bank Park, that is made for a left-handed home run swing like his. For now Harper has hit more than 40 home runs once in his career, and gotten to 100 RBIs once, last season, 100 on the nose, in a year when his batting average was .249.
But Harper has been more than his numbers in D.C., or his one Most Valuable Player Award. He has been the face of the Nationals franchise since he showed up in D.C. as a teenager. He has been their biggest and most glamorous and most visible star, even as the Nationals were so often a heartbreak team in the postseason. Now the Nationals see if they can go further in October without Harper than they ever did with him.
First they try to win the NL East without him, the way they did not win it with him. That is where the first battle is joined. If you add it all up, there has never been a big, glamorous free-agent star who did what Harper has just done in the same division. His new city is less than 150 miles from his old city, up I-95. In so many ways, it is as if Harper moved across the street.
When Alex Rodriguez signed his own record-breaking deal before the 2001 season, leaving the Mariners for the Rangers, he stayed in the same division, as well. It wasn’t anything like this, or even close. I’m not comparing the career Derek Jeter had with the Yankees with the one Harper is having. But in so many ways, Harper felt like their Jeter in Washington. Now he makes that short trip up I-95. Just that would have been enough to make the NL East this kind of show.
But there is more than that. The Braves are the ones who won the division last year, with a team built around their own Harper, Ronald Acuna Jr. Now they have added veterans like Josh Donaldson and Brian McCann and re-signed Nick Markakis, and still might be in play for Dallas Keuchel or Craig Kimbrel or both. Please remember that the Braves once were the National League East, winning it 11 straight times starting in 1995. They aren’t going anywhere, and don’t plan to go anywhere for a long time.
The Mets, who last won the division in 2015, have an aggressive new general manager in Brodie Van Wagenen, who made a very aggressive deal with the Mariners, not just getting Robinson Cano (who once signed a free-agent deal like Harper’s before the Mariners wanted to get out from under it) but closer Edwin Diaz at the same time. The Mets still have all those big arms in their starting rotation, starting with Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard. They may even get Yoenis Cespedes back, though no Mets fans I know are hopping on one leg waiting for that one.
And please remember what Van Wagenen said back in December when he took the Mets job:
“Internally, we would argue that we’re the favorites in the division right now.”
The AL East will be big fun this season, as always, because of the Red Sox and Yankees, with the Rays knocking at the door. The bigger fun is going to be in the NL East. More teams in the mix. More drama. And a whole lot of Bryce Harper. Sometimes free agency doesn’t just make one team better. It makes a whole division better. There have been a lot of free-agent moves. Never one quite like this one.