As teams descend on Arizona and Florida this week to gear up for spring training, two of baseball’s biggest stars — Bryce Harper and Manny Machado — remain unsigned, locked in a stalemate with a handful of teams with seemingly no end in sight.
There’s no doubt the 26-year-olds are two of the game’s biggest stars. So why the hold-up?
ESPN’s Jeff Passan spoke with people close to the hunt for both players and found out the reasons for the deadlock.
From Machado’s and Harper’s perspective, they are two of the best players in baseball, are in their primes and see no reason to take lower than their perceived market value.
“Neither seems particularly inclined to budge from that floor,” Passan writes. “Given the game’s annual revenues, which hover around $10 billion, their production, their age and past precedent, the $300 million-plus ask is by no means outlandish.”
For teams, they have seen how waiting can pay dividends — the Boston Red Sox waited until mid-February to sign J.D. Martinez last year — and believe they can apply pressure to Harper, Machado and even lesser free agents to take less desirable deals to get into camp.
“On the other side are the teams,” Passan writes. “They see the state of play in baseball. The longer teams have waited to sign players, the more players have accepted deals below what they expected at the beginning of the winter. It tends to work, preying on all kinds of potential vulnerabilities — the desire not to miss spring training or time with new teammates, familial pressure, fear of the unknown — to force players into uncomfortable decisions.”
At this point, it feels like both sides are too entrenched to budge, and neither star reportedly is expected to sign anytime soon. Stay tuned.
