I’ve been thinking a lot about the Bryce Harper situation when it comes to Kirk Cousins in recent weeks. The parallels are really interesting to me.
For years, the Nationals said that they are going to try to keep Harper and Bryce mostly kept his mouth shut, but when really pressed the outfielder said how much he liked playing in Washington… but no one ever really expected him to sign. Both sides were just dancing.
Just before the Major League Baseball’s 2018 signing period, the Nationals “lowballed” Harper with a 300 million dollar/ 30m per year contract (why couldn’t I have become a major leaguer!!!) Neither side expected the other to sign it. Harper’s agent never even presented a counter offer as far as I know. Nothing happened. Some local reporters even called the Nats final offer a “farewell gift.”
Come the signing period, the Nats sign Suzuki, Corbin, and a bunch of other players who are not Bryce Harper and pretty much admit that they have spent so much money on these other free agents that they couldn’t sign Bryce to the 300m deal the offered him even if Harper changed his mind. So, the Bryce Harper era ends in DC.
Sounds a lot like the Kirk Cousins situation to me. The big difference is how the city and MLB fans seem to have responded to the departure. Most are praising the Nats while lauding Harper. No one is really complaining how the Nats got nothing in return for Harper and how they should have traded him two years ago or last year if they knew they couldn’t re-sign him. No one’s griping about not getting compensation despite MLB being a much more trade-based sport than the NFL.
On the other side, most ripped the Redskins organization apart for their failure to sign Cousins or get anything in return for him. They view the Redskins’ lowball offer of 20+ million dollars a year a grave insult. More, the Redskins’ operations are depicted as clueless buffoons in large part because of their failure to land or trade away Kirk Cousins.
The difference is stark.
While I personally agree with the complaint that we should have traded Cousins and got something for him I am left wondering why this is not the prevalent thought when it comes to Bryce? Maybe it’s because the Nats while underachieving have also been winning? Maybe it’s because everyone thinks that the Nats have an A+ Front Office and that they did everything with a plan? Maybe it’s just cause Redskins fans and NFL fans are used to jeering the Redskins for being stupid and so look at everything the team does through an unflattering lens.
Personally, once that insanely offensive and stupid letter from Bruce Allen was released trying to villainize Kirk and his agent for not negotiating, I would have done everything in my power to trade Cousins because at that point Allen burned a bridge. His actions in publishing that letter in a misguided attempt to save face was monumentally stupid.
That said, it is different how caught up we are on the idea of compensation and how differently we view the Bryce Harper and Kirk Cousins situation.
