Yankees: Jon Heyman Kicks The Organization’s Tires On Bryce Harper

The Yankees and Phillies are the most likely landing spots for Bryce Harper when he becomes a free agent following the 2018 season, according to Jon Heyman, who has a pretty good track record on these things. Should the Yankees even be thinking about the 2019 season now? Maybe so, and more than we think.

The Yankees, in 2019, will be a team that we can’t even imagine now. The free agent class of 2018 will be a matter of record, and the Yankees will have made their pitch for Jake Arrieta to head their staff. The crop of talent that we see in camp now will have whittled itself down to a few who made the grade becoming fixtures in the Yankees lineup. The team itself will, at the very least, be challenging for a World Series title, and not merely a spot in the playoffs. So why are we even talking about Bryce Harper?

Jon Heyman and others throw this stuff out there, and we bite. And we do it because a talent like Bryce Harper is exactly the kind of player who fits the city of New York. He’s Hollywood. He’s brash, made for the back page of the New York Post, and he has an ego that outweighs even Matt Harvey in a town that craves this kind of stuff.

First, here’s what Heyman wrote:

"If not the Nats, the Yankees and Phillies do appear to be the most logical landing spots, and you hear them a lot in connection with Harper, as both teams are in rebuilds now (the Yankees’ is more of a modified rebuild) and have deep pockets, though one deeper than the other. Harper won’t discuss other teams (though it’s well documented he was a Yankees fan as a kid, for what that’s worth, and I’ve heard Yankees people more than once mention that fact) but he gushes about the Nats. “I enjoy Washington and playing in that historic town of monuments,” Harper said. “I love driving on 395 and getting off at the exit. It’s home. I love standing out in right field and hearing the cheers. I don’t hear those anywhere else.”"

He’s Hollywood. He’s brash, made for the back page of the New York Post, and he has an ego that outweighs even Matt Harvey in a town that craves this kind of stuff.

There’s a lot of ifs and or buts in there, but the thing that stands out is Harper’s apparent desire to play for the team he rooted for as a kid, the Yankees. Oh sure, he says all the right things about playing in our nation’s capital, but what’s he supposed to say at this juncture? That he hates playing with the Nationals?

Still, the question remains. Do the Yankees need Bryce Harper, and whether or not they do, should they be putting together a plan (now) that either includes or excludes him from that plan?

Virtually all of the Baby Bombers will be knocking on the door of either arbitration (if the process lasts that long) or free agency by 2019, because, by then, the numbers of years a team has control of a player will have been significantly reduced. This scenario spells big money for the likes of Gary Sanchez, Greg Bird, Gleyber Torres, and the others who have risen to the top of the organization. And this doesn’t count the expected pursuit of Orioles third baseman, Manny Machado.

Yankees Budget Be Damned – Or Not

By next season, the Yankees will finally have reached the stage of operating within a budget, and they could even fall under the luxury tax threshold. The question then becomes, are they striving to of meet this goal just to prove that they can do it, or are they firmly committed to budget restraints forever?

Harper already has put a price tag of $400 million out there. And it’s not that the Yankees can’t afford to pay him that much. Instead, the question is – do they want to? The other team mentioned by Heyman is the Phillies. Now, there is a team that could easily afford Harper in 2019. By then, according to Spotrac, the Phillies will have only $5.9 million committed in 2019 to player’s salaries. The Yankees cannot say the same thing.

Take A Pass

The only thing the Yankees need to do now is to (internally) decide whether or not Harper fits into their plans for the future. We don’t need to know, and neither does Jon Heyman if that’s the story he is hoping to get.

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My guess would be that they stick to their current plan of developing the Baby Bombers into a formula winning team. And when the time comes, Scott Boras will use the Yankees to drive Harper’s price up, even though he knows, because the Yankees have told him, “Thanks, but no thanks.”