The Nats Owner Pretty Much Gave a Concession Speech in the Harper Sweepstakes

Patrick Corbin may end up being the most important acquisition of the offseason for the Phillies.

I know what I said.

The Nats way overpaid for him, saving the Phillies payroll to be used elsewhere and soon. The Nationals now have $525 million tied up in the starting rotation, only three pieces of it to be exact. The well is dry in DC, and Harper is still out there.

So, on the day in which the Nationals were supposed to introduce their new, high-priced arm, none of the talk was about Corbin. Instead, Nationals owner, Mark Lerner, offered his thoughts on the ongoing Harper sweepstakes. His words mirrored that of a failed campaign, offering their concession to the opposition:

“Well, when we met with them and we gave them the offer, we told them, ‘This is the best we can do.’ We went right to the finish line very quickly.”And we said, ‘If this is of interest to you, please come back to us and we’ll see whether we can finish it up.’ But we just couldn’t afford to put more than that in and still be able to put a team together that had a chance to win the NL East or go farther than that.”

“If they choose some other place, I totally understand. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime for Bryce and Kayla and their family. But we have no hard feelings about it, I must say. I love Bryce and he was a good teammate here. If he chooses to go some place else, I totally understand it, but we put one heck of an offer out there.”

I don’t want to jinx this for the Phillies, and I am not saying this means they are landing Harper, but this sure seems like a white flag. Imagine the Warriors walking into a free agency pitch with Kevin Durant and they say, “This is the best we can do”. It would’ve created some more parity in the NBA, because it never would’ve worked. Lerner also says of Harper, “he was a good teammate here”. WAS. Past tense. He gone.

The Nationals were never signing Harper. We all knew it, he knew it, Boras knew it, and the team knew it. They didn’t even need to say what they said this morning. After Corbin, there was never a shot, even if they wanted to, which they didn’t. The teams that they’ve put together over the last few years were their best chance at winning anything and it never happened.  It was time to part with Harper and try something new (the Angels are going to do this with Trout in 2020 if they don’t trade him first to get something out of him).

What we heard today was a concession speech. And baring any hanging chads I think we can trust that it will stand, the Nats are out of the race (they were never in it) and that only leaves the Phils, Yankees, and Dodgers (posssibly White Sox too?). Despite never meeting the mean, I think I trust Bryce to make the right move.

All this on the same day that the Phillies announce their new logo. What could this mean? Nothing? No. It definitely feels more like something. Like maybe they’re debuting it so they can show it for the first time on their big-name acquisition….? We’ll have to keep being patient and see.