It is interesting the set of offers that are coming out. The Giants were at 310/12, so not too far off from the Phillies other than the CA tax rate. Dodgers were shorter at 3/135 or 4/168 to have $45 and $42 million AAVs. Phillies had multiple offers of short, medium, and long term.
One has to conclude that Harper is the player the Phillies wanted all the time. Whether we would have gone higher is an open question. And to Harper's credit he went into this looking for a career-long deal. Hence the lack of opt outs and the no trade aspect. I think he wanted to go longer than 10 years all along, so maybe the Dodgers were never a serious contender with their shorter deals. Thus Klentak got his man without going to the $30 million AAV level.
I have been critical of Klentak on some things, but clearly he played this right and knew what Harper wanted. Then Harper bent on the AAV which was what Philly wanted. Need to give credit where credit is due. This was not just about the money. It looks like Klentak did a good job on the negotiating end. Of course we need to check back in a decade as to whether his choice of Harper over Machado was correct.
