Phillies are NOT Signing Both Harper and Machado

With a surprisingly small number of teams engaged on superstar free agents Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, it has at times seemed as if the big-budget Phillies are the favorites to land both players. Of course, even if the Philadelphia org is the likeliest single team to secure the services of each, that does not mean that it should be expected to come away with a pair of monster deals. Still, the possibility of hooking two free agent trophies has remained tantalizing to consider.

In the course of an interesting breakdown of the current situation, though, Matt Gelb of The Athletic (subscription link) strikes a blow to the idea of the Phillies making successive strikes for both Harper and Machado. The Phils, he reports, have “made this much clear during negotiations: They will not sign both players.”

Certainly, there was never anything approaching an expectation that the Phillies would land both, or even that they’d seriously consider taking on two huge salaries. But it’s still a notable bit of seemingly hard information in a market situation that has remained exceedingly fluid, so far as is known publicly.

As Gelb explains, moreover, that stance is perhaps a notable aspect of the Phillies’ strategy in approaching both Harper and Machado. If the club’s money is only there for one of the two players, that conveys no small amount of leverage. Even if both players would rather end up elsewhere, they surely can’t ignore the presence of the Phils’ ample pocketbooks in navigating a surprisingly barren field of pursuers.

Perhaps the best case scenario for the Philadelphia club would be for one of these two players to jump on a big but palatable offer to join on. Of course, their respective representatives — Scott Boras, for Harper, and Dan Lozano, for Machado — have played this game before. We’ve seen teams emerge from the woodwork in the past to land players of this quality with surprisingly massive contracts. As Gelb rightly suggests, the presence (or absence) of “mystery teams” — whether as active bidders or as conjured by the agents — may go a long way toward influencing the course of negotiations.

This shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone.  Theoretically, the Phillies (or Sox) could afford both Harper or Machado, but that puts them in lux tax hell 3-4 years down the road.  Here are the Phillies financial commitments the next few years:

The lux tax will be about $206MM this year.  If the Phillies added both Machado and Harper, they’d be adding about $70MM to that, putting them right under the tax.  They also already have about $80MM committed next year, and that doesn’t take into account arbitration raises, free agent additions, etc.

So if the Phillies wanted to put themselves over the lux tax, they’d be fucked financially for all proceeding years. That’s just a fact. I’ve said it a million times this winter, there are NO SUCH THINGS as teams with unlimited money.  That’s why the Yankees, Cubs, Red Sox, etc. all are making stop gap moves this winter.  The lux tax works as an ipso facto salary cap.

So all this tells us is Machado and Harper’s market boils down to 2 team: The White Sox and Phillies.  Now this could all be posturing, which we see ad nauseum in the media these days, and the Phillies could very well land both still.  They’d kinda be fucking themselves down the road, but they’d be a potential juggernaut for 3-4 years or so.  “Stupid money” comments aside, their GM Matt Klentak will operate fiscally responsibly and not blow their wad on both, especially knowing Trout could be a free agent two years from now.

As an aside, none of this takes into account on whether or not Machado and Harper even want to play with each other.  But we can make a safe assumption that their agents do not want this to be the case.  Dan Lozano and Scott Boras are the two biggest egotists in sports.  They’d be submitting as inferior if this were the case.

Also, Jerry Reinsdorf, master negotiator, has taken control of the Sox negotiations with Machado’s camp:

So *hopefully* JR makes Lozano lay on his back so he can rub his belly.  Negotiate him into submission and get this thing wrapped up ASAP.

And if Machado and Harper do both land in Harper, for what looks like it’ll be a way lower figure than originally thought… shit will hit the absolute FAN on Jerry