[Duquette] "The Phillies have been around 270-300 million (on Harper) and they h...
This comment was posted to reddit on Mar 01, 2019 at 12:30 am and was deleted within 14 hour(s) and 51 minutes.
[Duquette] "The Phillies have been around 270-300 million (on Harper) and they haven't moved. That's not going to get it done."
That he's relatively young and shows big dinger power glosses over some issues:
His one truly elite year was in 2015, which is a long way in the rear view mirror at this point.
He's been only a 133 OPS+ hitter over the past 3 seasons. That's a very good hitter but not really MVP caliber production.
His fielding is somewhere between bad and awful, and he's quickly trending toward being best suited as a full-time DH on a team that isn't allowed to card a DH...
Factoring in that fielding, he's only been averaging 2.5 bWAR over the past 3 seasons. fWAR is a little bit more generous over the past 3 seasons (3.0, 4.8, 3.5), but not exactly anything to get too excited about.
13 years guaranteed for any human is a huge gamble. In Harper's case, he spent his teenage years as a catcher, so he might actually have more wear and tear than you'd expect as a 25-26 year player.
$25M/yr seems reasonable but the length is brutal. Anyway, enjoy!