FanPost

Nationals Chose To Give Bryce Harper Major-League Deal

In reading Jayson Stark's article on how to screw the small market teams even more, I glanced down the page and noticed this mind-blowing tidbit...

One baseball man we talked to speculated that if the Nationals had been willing to give Harper a minor league contract -- which would have meant paying him all the money up front -- they might have been able to sign him as, uh, "cheaply" as $8 million.

Whoa. So, this source is saying it was the Nationals' preference to sign Harper to an MLB deal? And the answer is, yes, apparently...

But because the Nationals wanted to stretch out the payments, the rules required them to do that via a big league deal. And because of Harper's age, they felt they needed a five-year contract instead of something shorter.

The problem with giving him a big league deal is that Harper is 17, and this means he will have only options in 2011, 2012 and 2013 and after that he will have to make the big league club to stay at the age of 21. If he somehow gets injured, like Tony Sanchez or Starling Marte, and loses development time, well, too bad, at least in most cases (if it happens near the beginning of a year he could get a fourth option).

It seems crazy that the Nats would have purposely put themselves into this position because they didn't want to spend the upfront money. I just don't see Neal Huntington making this same mistake.

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