Baseball Week continues! If you missed it, check out yesterday’s podcast episode. Today, it’s a preview of the NLCS, which starts tonight.
The 2022 National League Championship Series is a pretty cool matchup for a few reasons. For one, it’s not one anybody really saw coming. As recently as a few weeks ago, the Phillies and Padres were floundering, in danger of being overtaken by the Brewers for the final wild card slot. Then the Padres had to beat a 101-win Mets team and a 111-win Dodger team that has had its number, seemingly for years. Meanwhile, the Phillies had to top the Cardinals and the defending world champion Braves. People seem to have mixed feelings about whether these upsets are good for baseball or bad, and we will return to that topic later in Baseball Week.
But for now I want to focus on another cool thing about the NLCS, one of specific note for pro-labor baseball fans: Manny Machado vs. Bryce Harper.
Try to remember, if you can, the winter of 2018. It was a time before automatic runners, when nobody asked athletes what they thought about vaccines, and banging trash cans was only wholesome. It was a time of hope and optimism… at least, for Harper and Machado.
These were two of the most anticipated free agents in baseball history. Both debuted in 2012, when Harper was 19 and Machado 20 year old, so they were entering free agency before their age-26 season – still right in the middle of their primes. And both had shown they were among the most talented players in the league: Harper had won the Rookie of the Year in 2012 and the NL MVP in 2015. Machado had just helped get the Dodgers to the World Series, and was one of the most talented defensive third basemen in history.
For years before these guys reached free agency, people had speculated about how much they would sign for, and where they would go. It seemed like the kind of free agent sweepstakes that only happens once a decade, now happening twice in the same year. As a Yankee fan, I know I had been dreaming about signing one of these guys for years (first it was Harper, but once they traded for Giancarlo Stanton and their outfield got crowded, it was Machado).
Then the offseason began and… nothing happened. Free agency began and neither Bryce nor Manny signed anywhere. The Winter Meetings came and went, and neither signed. The calendar turned to January, and neither signed. Spring training opened, and still neither was signed.
More than that, nobody even seemed interested in signing these guys. The Yankees decided to “focus on pitching” (even though they didn’t actually sign any starting pitchers). They had spots in their infield to play Machado… but instead signed Troy Tulowitzki and DJ LeMahieu.
The Mets were still ruled by the cheap Wilpons, not the free-spending Steve Cohen, so they showed no interest. The Cubs were about to enter another rebuilding phase, and weren’t sure about extending their own stars, so they weren’t inclined to offer a big contract. And the Dodgers seemed to have soured on Machado after concerns about him not hustling the previous season.
In January, rumors leaked that the White Sox had offered Manny Machado $175 million over seven years, which seemed shockingly low – 30% less than Alex Rodriguez had signed for 18 years earlier. Machado’s agent quickly disputed that number, but the lack of interest in either Harper or Machado made it seem plausible.
It seemed like General Managers had finally decided: No more big contracts for free agents. There were too many examples of teams offering long term, big money deals to star players, only to regret them a few years later: A-Rod, Ryan Howard, Albert Pujols, Giancarlo Stanton, Prince Fielder, Robinson Cano, etc. GMs just weren’t going to do it anymore.
Worse, many fans and writers covering the game defended them. These GMs were being “smart.” That wasn’t the universal feeling; many people saw it as a sign of baseball’s impending labor strife. But there was also definitely a sense that smart teams knew better than to make any long commitments to players, even young, super talented ones like Machado and Harper.
This idea lingered even after they signed, because of who they signed with. First, in late February, Machado signed a ten-year, $300 million contract. It was, at the time, the biggest free agent deal in history (Stanton’s contract was worth more, but he signed his as an extension, before he reached free agency). But he signed it with the San Diego Padres, a moribund franchise that had not won a playoff series in 20 years, and had only one winning season the previous decade.
The Padres were not known as a savvy franchise. A few years earlier, they’d gone All In, making a bunch of big trades for Wil Myers, Justin Upton, and Matt Kemp, and giving a big contract to James Shields. It was a disaster: They still lost 88 games; Upton and Kemp were off the team within a year and a half, while Myers never quite lived up to his promise; and the prospects they gave up in those deals included Trea Turner, Max Fried, and Yasmani Grandal. The only positive was that in 2016, they traded Shields for a prospect named Fernando Tatís, Jr.
But they didn’t seem much better off going into 2019. They had just lost 96 games and, other than Tatís, who hadn’t even debuted yet, they didn’t have much discernible talent on the roster. Signing Machado looked like another act of desperation, and Manny seemed destined to languish on bad teams for a decade.
A few weeks later, Harper signed with Philadelphia for 13 years and $330 million. This was technically the biggest contract in baseball history, but it still felt like a letdown. Harper’s former team, the Washington Nationals, had offered him a 10-year, $300 million,* which he had rejected, so it looked like a lot of fuss for an extra three years and $30 million.
*Ten years and $300 million were the top-line numbers, but this was misleading: Over $100 million of the contract Washington offered was deferred, and Harper wouldn’t have seen that money for decades. Deferred money can be nice (ask Bobby Bonilla!) but it seriously lowers the real value of the deal.
And while the Phillies weren’t as bad as the Padres – they won 80 games in 2018, had Aaron Nola and Rhys Hoskins, and had already traded for J.T. Realmuto that offseason – they were still seven years removed from their last winning season. Like San Diego, they were not thought of as a particularly well-run team, and everyone assumed they would regret Harper’s deal before it was over, if not immediately.
In 2019, it looked like the people who doubted these deals were right. Neither Harper nor Machado received any MVP votes, or even made the All-Star team. Their teams barely improved with them. Machado was especially disappointing, turning in the worst full season of his career.
But he rebounded the next year, making a credible case for MVP in the shortened 2020 season, and leading the Padres to their first postseason since 2006. In 2021, Harper won the MVP, leading the Phillies to their first winning season in a decade. And now, in 2022, their teams are facing each other in the NLCS. Harper has been dogged by injuries all year, and hasn’t been able to play the field, but he’s hit when he had the chance, including five extra base hits in the Division Series win against the Braves.
And Machado has been even better. He was an early frontrunner for NL MVP, and while he cooled a little after his hot start, he still ended with a .298/.366/.531 slash line. Without his production, it’s hard to imagine how San Diego could have weathered missing Tatís for the whole year, and Juan Soto’s relative mediocrity for a few months. He was the one constant in that lineup, showing up again in the Wild Card round and the Division Series.
After all the hand-wringing in 2018-19 about “smart GMs” and the dangers of big contracts, it turns out that, actually, adding good players makes your team better. In baseball, no single player can do it alone, and sometimes that confuses people. But signing good players is good – it is a necessary, if not sufficient, part of building a winning baseball team. Refusing to sign good players to big deals does not make teams smart; it makes them cheap.
So watching Harper and Machado meet in the NLCS just four years into their deals is vindicating. These contracts did not, in fact, weigh those teams down – they turned those teams around. That doesn’t mean there won’t be disappointing years in there; they’ve both already had at least one, and they’ll probably have more. But one of them will be in the World Series. And how much would a fan pay for that?
As far as who a socialist should root for in this series, I don’t really think you can go wrong here. The Padres are probably the more likable team, but I lean slightly towards the Phillies, because of the Fernando Tatís of it all: I worry that if the Padres make the World Series while Tatís is suspended, it will fuel the anti-labor narrative that has been crystallizing against Tatís, first with his motorcycle accident and then with his dubious suspension. What can I say? I’m just a sucker for anyone who gets attacked for alleged PED use… But like I said, you can’t really go wrong in this series.