Well, thank goodness that's over.
The Philadelphia Phillies became the preseason favorites in the National League East -- which is worth something, I suppose, until the games begin in earnest -- with the signing of Bryce Harper to the largest contract in baseball history by total value. It is also, as odd as this might sound, kind of team-friendly. It's still a good deal for Harper, who has gone from high school phenom to No. 1 pick to MVP to a man who'll be rich beyond any of our wildest dreams. And he doesn't even have to be peak Harper to make this a very good deal for the Phillies.
Harper steps in as the Phillies' right fielder, replacing the disappointing Nick Williams, who has been somewhere around replacement level in a year-plus with the big club, and even just an adequate, healthy season from Harper makes that a four- to five-win upgrade.
Williams has always struggled with pitch recognition, and even a higher-than-expected walk rate last year didn't get his OBP above .324. Harper has been at .393 or better in three of the past four seasons, with the fourth, still .373, coming in a season when he was knocked down by injuries. That's probably around 50 more baserunners for the Phillies over the course of a season, before we even get to talking about Harper's superior power, baserunning or ability to hit left-handed pitching.
Of course, the Phillies are hoping Harper turns in another season like his age-22 performance in 2015, when he had the third-highest WAR (by Baseball-Reference.com) ever for a player age 22 or younger, behind Ted Williams in 1941 (the .406 season) and Mike Trout in 2012. Harper's performance that year, when he led the league in OBP and slugging, was good for 10 wins above replacement -- or about 10 wins above Nick Williams in 2018.
Returning to that level would require two things from Harper. One is a better performance on balls in play. He has been well below .300 twice in the past three years and still productive despite that but falling below his potential. The other is to reverse his career-worst showing on defense in 2018, which multiple people have argued was the result of a small sample size and deeper positioning. Because he hasn't lost any speed or reacted more slowly than in previous years, I'm in the camp that believes Harper can still be an average defender if moved to left, maybe even adding value with his arm strength.
The Phillies finished 10 games behind division-winning Atlanta last season, with Washington in between Philly and the Braves. Since the season ended, the Phils have added Harper, Jean Segura, J.T. Realmuto, Andrew McCutchen and David Robertson, which, given who those guys are replacing, should be worth more than 10 extra wins to the team this year. The calculus is never that simple, of course, since returning players might regress, but I do think even considering the probability that Phillies players coming off their best seasons lose some ground, they project as a 90-plus-win team, and with Atlanta doing little this winter and the Nats probably holding serve by losing Harper but adding Patrick Corbin and smaller pieces, I'd call the Phillies the NL East favorites. Dan Szymborski's ZiPS projections at FanGraphs have the Phillies at 88 wins, with a (conservative, in my view) projection of 3.5 to 4 extra wins from Harper.
The contract structure itself is worth noting, even though I usually just wave off that stuff because it's mostly money and legalese. Harper gets the largest total deal in history, but by net present value it's equivalent to Manny Machado's, or very close to it, because the Phillies gave Harper, in essence, Machado's deal plus an extra three years and $30 million. That drops the average annual value from $30 million (Machado's deal) to about $25.4 million, which also helps the Phillies for luxury-tax purposes. If Harper is the player the Phillies hope he is in the first 10 years of the deal, then suddenly becomes late-stage Albert Pujols at 36, then the last three years amount to some deferred money for the team -- and if you ask me to put $100 on whether Harper will be a $10 million-per-year player in 2029, assuming we haven't reduced the surface of the earth to cinders by then, I'd bet on yes.