Giants Rumors

SUNDAY: The Giants plan on making Harper a short-term, big-money offer, but they’re uninterested in giving him a long-term contract along the lines of the 10-year, $300MM proposal he rejected from the Nationals, Bob Nightengale of USA Today reports.

SATURDAY: The Giants’ meeting with free-agent outfielder Bryce Harper took place this past Monday, and it lasted twice as long as expected, per reports from Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area and John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle. Harper’s summit with Giants CEO Larry Baer, president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi and manager Bruce Bochy was supposed to span two hours, but it went four. After their Las Vegas visit with Harper, “there certainly was an increase in optimism” that the Giants could reel him in, writes Pavlovic, who adds there’s “an increased sense” in the clubhouse that the superstar wants to sign with San Francisco.

The Giants, for their part, are understandably bullish on Harper. On Saturday, one day after Zaidi made it known the Giants are indeed going after Harper, Baer did the same while lavishing praise on the longtime National.

“Bryce Harper is an amazing player,” Baer said. “It’s very hard, and these are competitions, and I can’t handicap it. I don’t know where we are. But we’re giving it a shot. That’s all we can do.”

Baer also made note of Harper’s age, 26, as one of the six-time All-Star’s main selling points and even referred to the Giants’ successful courtship of Barry Bonds in 1992. Then 28, Bonds, like Harper now, reached free agency after establishing himself as one of the game’s preeminent players. And the Giants managed to wrest Bonds away from Pittsburgh, where he spent the first seven years of his career, and fend off other suitors by offering him a then-record contract worth $43.75MM over six years. As Bonds did nearly 27 years ago, Harper could now be in position to set a new high-water mark when it comes to baseball contracts. It seems Harper’s aiming to approach or surpass Giancarlo Stanton’s historic $325MM pact, having reportedly turned down a $300MM-plus offer from the Nats earlier this offseason.

The Giants didn’t make an offer to Harper when they met with him, nor do they expect the protracted race for his services to end this weekend, according to Pavlovic. But as a big-spending franchise that sported the National League’s least valuable outfield in 2018, San Francisco’s second straight horrendous showing in the standings, it seems as logical a landing spot for Harper as any team in the game. And now, after winning three World Series from 2010-14 but falling from grace lately, the goal is “to bring championships back to the Giants’ fans,” Baer noted. While adding Harper may not vault the Giants back into title contention immediately, Baer’s of the belief that “one player can make a difference.”

Newly appointed Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said today that the organization shares “mutual interest'” with free agent star Bryce Harper, as Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area was among those to report.

Zaidi acknowledged that he, CEO Larry Baer, and skipper Bruce Bochy recently sat down with Harper, Harper’s wife Kayla, and agent Scott Boras. There was no sense playing dumb on the subject. As Zaidi amusingly noted, Baer was “made in the casino” by an eagle-eyed fan during the visit to Las Vegas.

The mere fact of the visit itself largely made the point already, but it’s notable that the Giants are publicly discussing their ongoing interest. Zaidi called it a “good conversation over a few hours,” while Bochy labeled it “a great meeting” and heaped praise upon Harper.

While the seeming lack of widespread interest in the 26-year-old Harper (along with the similarly situated Manny Machado) has thus far been the story of the offseason, Zaidi did not drop any hints that the Giants were only swooping in to see if the price had dropped. That may have been part of the thinking, to be sure, but the top San Francisco baseball decisionmaker said that Harper has “a lot of suitors and a lot of interest” from around the game.

Pavlovic offers some other items of note as well, reporting that the initial meeting “lasted much longer than the Giants anticipated.” As Craig Mish of MLB Network Radio tweeted previously, Zaidi also met afterward with Boras on the latter’s private jet. (No word on whether Zaidi first tried to board the wrong aircraft.) While Zaidi acknowledged that Harper could make a decision in short order, the San Francisco organization has yet to formally put a contract in front of him. It stands to reason that it’ll do so in short order. It’s hard to know at this point how likely it is that Harper will choose to head to San Francisco, but it seems the organization is at minimum a viable suitor at this late stage of the process.