Bryce spent his last year in Washington making sure that "$40 million a season" took a life of its own while his performance plummeted.  It's hard to imagine him ever being worth the money the Phillies have paid him but if he can be a Top 20 player who consistently contributes towards his team contending for championships, the Phils would take that in a second.  This season, neither of those things came close to happening.

To Bryce's defense, the Nats dicked around in his contract negotiations, floating a generous number that was to be severely backloaded.  Unfortunately, the Lerners do have a track record of doing this.  Anthony Rendon's extension could have been easily sewn up by now but the Nats played that wait and see game.  Next year, Rendon will either be playing for the Nats for far more than he otherwise may have signed for earlier, or he will be playing for a different team.  Despite their great starting pitching (which won't last too much longer) and their young talent, failing to sign Harper and Rendon in consecutive years would send a very ugly message to the fan base.  Good thing they're doing what they're doing now.

The Nats predecessors and the Marlins are two examples of teams who could not afford to keep young talent together.  The very good Expo teams eventually lost Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, Ellis Valentine, Larry Walker and later, Vlad Guerrero because they could not afford to resign these guys.  Same for the Marlins with so many great players.  It would be hard to portray the Nats, a team in the top half of the league in attendance, television market (though the MASN dispute with Angelos has not helped), and ownership's net worth, as a team who consistently can't afford to sign its star players.  

The Nationals are huge spenders and have a payroll around 200MM, having bought Scherzer, Corbin, and extended Strasburg for huge $$$. They are paying Brian Dozier 9MM this year to essentially be a back up now.  they began this all with Jayson Werth's huge deal, extended Ryan Zimmerman (both mistakes) 
Lerner is spending more, per revenue than all but 3 baseball teams (the 3 smallest, A's Rays and Twins) 

Not signing Harper to a disaster albatross contract is smart baseball.  Not accurate at all that they aren't spending big.  they are doing just that.   

Last edited by The Dude (10/11/2019 7:34 pm)

I don't believe I said that the Nats weren't spending big.  It's easy to verify this by looking at team payrolls.  In fact, I did say that Bryce was not worth the money that the Phillies are paying him.  The point of my post is that the Nats were a bit deceptive with their fan base by stating that their offer to Bryce was very competitive (which it was as a total figure) while omitting how backloaded the deal was.  When Boras went public with the present value of the Nats offer, it was a bit of a PR snafu for the team.  And with this as background, it would look really bad to lose Rendon a year after losing Harper over money.  That in a nutshell was my point.

It is hard to separate my own subjective feelings but I would have to believe that even the most objective observer would have to find this to be an unbelievably incredible story.  19-31 in May.  A bullpen that started out amongst the worst in the game which included a counted-upon off-season acquisition with a very live arm who could not get anyone out..  A major injury to their lead-off hitter which stalled the offense. The face of the franchise missing much time due to injury and rightfully relegated to a role player down the stretch.  Paling in comparison all season long to a division rival.  Plus, a postseason history this decade that had been nothing short of dreadful.  And then, guys got healthy.  In-season acquisitions started contributing.  A talented bench player arrived with his Baby Shark walk-up song and completely revitalized the clubhouse.  And then, the postseason to end all postseasons.  5-0 in elimination games, coming from behind in each one of them.  Deploying multi-millionaire starting pitchers out of the bullpen as needed.  The three run Soto single in the Wild Card game.  The Kendrick grand slam against the Dodgers.  The dominant starts by Sanchez and Strasburg against the Cardinals.  And finally, the home field disadvantage in the series.  The Rendon "my price is going up by the minute" performances.  Going down 3-2 with Scherzer unable to pitch, but watching Maz battle for 5 innings in Game 7, followed by Patrick Corbin all but closing the door on the Astros.  Congratulations to the Nats, and their fans.  This could not feel much better.

The Nationals will begin "defense"(can you really consider this 60-game season with no fans and key players choosing to sit out during a pandemic legit??) of their World Series crown in a few hours against the Yankees, but the big news is that Juan Soto has tested positive for the coronavirus!! J.Soto will need 2 straight positive tests before he is allowed to play again. Key players(like Soto) testing positive for COVID could be a huge problem for baseball and other sports since COVID has started to peak again in several states. 

Do you guys think baseball(or the other sports) will be able to complete a full season in 2020?

LOL yeah, Soto will need 2 negative tests before he can play again, but testing negative would be a positive for him and 2 negatives equal a positive in math so I was kind of right!!!  But seriously, I'm sure there is some concern in the organization as to whether Soto spread it to anyone on the Nationals(or the Orioles) because he played in 2 exhibition games against the Orioles earlier this week.