Washington Nationals Mock Offseason: Harper leaves, Rendon extended

In FanSided’s mock MLB offseason, acting as the Washington Nationals, we pushed hard for Bryce Harper, before agreeing to an extension for Anthony Rendon.

We continue on with the FanSided MLB Mock Offseason with arguably the biggest decision of the winter for the Fake Washington Nationals. Site Expert Blake Finney, playing the role of Mike Rizzo, finally has to make the key decision of what to do with Bryce Harper and Anthony Rendon.

Again, it’s important for us to emphasize that this is part of our Offseason Simulation with FanSided and not actual events. That being said, this is an entirely realistic, and potentially very likely scenario to come to fruition over the coming months.

Whether we like it or not, the entire offseason is centered around one man, Bryce Harper. When you have such a high-priced situation, that simply has to come first before the other major dominos can slide into place.

For example, in this offseason simulation, while we were in the bidding for Harper, we also had discussions with the Seattle Mariners over James Paxton. If we had to allocate funds to the homegrown outfielder, we couldn’t then go after a top-end free agent starter and would have to settle that need via a trade.

And obviously, one of the other ripple effects from the Harper decision is going to be Anthony Rendon. Entering his contract year, he becomes a priority later on in the offseason, and the Nats would be wise to try to extend him once Harper has decided where to sign.

We’ll get into the Rendon details a little later on in the piece, but first, let’s see how the Harper drama unfolded.

Fake Nationals miss out on Bryce Harper

As soon as the free agency opened in our FanSided Mock Offseason, the first move fake general manager Blake Finney made was to enter the Bryce Harper sweepstakes. Unfortunately, the fake Washington Nationals couldn’t come out with their homegrown superstar.

Before we go into the details of the offers that were put onto the table, first it’s important to go over the rule of free agent contracts. In this simulation, for free agent bidding, contract offers had to be in the simplest form, which means no opt-outs, no team, player or mutual options, no deferred money, or uneven yearly salary.

The Bidding War

Finney and the fake Nats quickly countered an early St. Louis Cardinals offer with a 12-year, $400 million contract offer for Harper. This came in just under the $35 million annual average we had initially set out as a budget.

That offer held for a while with Harper’s “agent” considering the bid before the pesky Phillies came back in and trumped it with a 12-year $425 million offer. That offer meant we had to go over our initial budget for AAV to bring back Harper.

Given it was the division rival Phillies leading the bidding, after some deliberation, we went up to 12-years and $440 million. The annual average $36.67 million was manageable, but with other teams still lurking, things didn’t look good.

That turned out to be the case, as the Chicago White Sox came in a with a hefty 12-year, $462 million offer for Harper. It was getting late in the bidding process, and we considered topping it for a time, before sensibly declining.

But that wasn’t the end of the drama, the Phillies beat the buzzer at the end to ink Harper for 12 years and an astounding $485 million. In a world without out-opts and player options, that contract is quite the price to pay, even for Bryce Harper.

The Reaction

It’s going to be painful to watch fake Harper play against the Nats for 12 seasons, but when you consider he’ll be draining them of over $40 million per season, the pain goes away. The Phillies wanted to be desperate, so we let them.

In our Fake Offseason blueprint, we did have Harper in those plans, with Adam Eaton in trade discussions early on in case we won the big sweepstakes. We had Adam Eaton and prospects set to head to the Seattle Mariners for James Paxton and Mike Leake, but the Phillies nixed those plans.

So now, with Harper going to fake Philly, the Eaton trade talks stopped, and we immediately focused our attention on the next best thing for the team. Anthony Rendon.