It's fun to play the what-if game with Bryce Harper, imagining him dropped into the middle of a particular lineup. There are Braves fans who view this as more than fantasy, however, based on the response to a tweet posted the other day, after Atlanta signed Josh Donaldson.
Possible Braves lineup:
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) November 26, 2018
LF Acuna
2B Albies
1B Freeman
3B Donaldson
RF ?
CF Inciarte
C Flowers/McCann
SS Swanson
There has been speculation about the Braves' possible pursuit of Harper because Atlanta is a team on the rise, and it has a need for an outfielder. But no Braves fan -- and I have a 14-year-old in my home who wears a Freddie Freeman shirt to school at least once a week -- should bother jumping on social media every five minutes over the next three months to check for a Harper/Atlanta update, because it's not how the franchise does business.
MLB has a long history of owners rushing into negotiations to rashly make deals. Heck, former Braves owner Ted Turner was one of baseball's original impetuous spenders, investing big in Andy Messersmith and Claudell Washington. In a 48-hour push after the 2011 season, Angels owner Arte Moreno committed some $250 million to Albert Pujols and executed a similar lightning-strike negotiation a year later on Josh Hamilton. Mike Ilitch, the late Tigers owner who was beloved by that team's fan base, served as an annual Mystery Team for Scott Boras, signing Magglio Ordonez, Prince Fielder and others.
But the Braves aren't set up to work that way. The team is owned by Liberty Media, rather than one person who can generally act independently. As Tim Tucker recently reported, the team is doing very well financially, but under Liberty's direction, the budget is set and the baseball operations department is expected to work within those parameters; there isn't a lot of room for freelancing.
A signing of Harper would require far more than freelancing; to sign Harper, Liberty would have to completely reconstruct its carefully designed financial plans. Last season, the Braves' payroll was about $120 million, or about the same as what it was in 2017. With the signing of Donaldson, the Braves have already committed about $110 million to their 2019 payroll, if you include the likely salaries for the players eligible for salary arbitration.
At minimum, Harper will command a salary in the range of $25 million to $30 million for 2019 -- and that's only if his contract is backloaded, because the average salary of his forthcoming deal might be closer to $35 million. The addition of Harper would require Liberty Media -- not one passionate and frantic owner doling out his own bucks, but a corporation built on collaborative decisions -- to commit more than 20 percent of the team's budget to one player and raise the overall payroll by about $30 million.
There's probably a better chance of LeBron James signing with the Braves than Bryce Harper (given how much LeBron loves baseball).
The Braves do have that gaping outfield hole and some money to spend, and yes, they'll add somebody. But as with a lot of teams, the Braves might be better off hanging back and waiting to see what develops, and see if the prices drop, because the volume of options in the corner-outfield market will probably work in their favor eventually. Harper is the best of the group, and below him there are A.J. Pollock, Andrew McCutchen, Michael Brantley, Adam Jones, Gerardo Parra and Carlos Gonzalez. And, of course, there is Nick Markakis, who performed well for the Braves last season, hitting .297 with 185 hits and a .366 on-base percentage. His 14 homers matched his high for any year since 2011, and truth be told, the Braves would probably prefer a power upgrade at the position, but depending on how the market evolves, re-signing Markakis is among the range of possibilities.
The Braves will continue to look for other marginal upgrades, but by winter's end, the addition of Donaldson figures to be the team's big move of the offseason -- a slugger who bolsters the middle of the order and will force opposing pitchers to work to Freeman more consistently, regardless of whether he hits in front of Freeman (and gets on base, boxing in pitchers in their decisions) or behind the first baseman.
When manager Brian Snitker writes a name into the right-field spot in his lineup, however, it won't be Bryce Harper.