By Tim Kelly, Sports Talk Philly editor 
Right now (emphasis on right now), Mike Trout is a better baseball player than Bryce Harper. Mike Trout is on-pace to be one of the greatest players in the history of the league, is from Millville and roots for the Philadelphia Eagles. But Bryce Harper, who may very well go on to have a Hall of Fame career himself, may be a better eventual target for the Phillies than Trout.
Harper, who can become a free-agent after the 2018 season, seems more likely to eventually reach the free-agent market than Trout. Bob Nightengale of USA Today says that Harper and his agent Scott Boras are asking for a 10-year/$400 million contract, which he notes that the Washington Nationals are not interested in giving him. Rather than trading him, the Nationals appear to be in win-now mode, as various reports have connected them to Andrew McCutchen, suggesting they will try to milk everything out of Harper's final two seasons in the Nation's Capital.
While $40 million per season may seem excessive right now, if Harper were to hit the open market in 2018, it's entirely possible he pushes $45 million. In either instance, the idea of being able to sign a player of Harper's ability when he's 26 years old will be something that executives salivate at. Harper may get a 10-year contract, but what he will essentially be signing is a four or five year contract, that he will opt out of when he's 30 or 31, to sign an even larger deal, much like Alex Rodriguez did.
Harper is on a competitive team, that will likely spend the final two seasons of his team control competing to win the franchise's first World Series. Trout, however, is on a team that has made the playoffs once in his career, and appears to be trending the wrong way in a division that's has three teams (Texas Rangers, Houston Astros, Seattle Mariners) that appear likely to block the Angels from returning to the playoffs soon.
So even though Trout is under contract through 2020, the Angels will probably come to a point where they need to consider trading Trout before he can leave in free-agency. A trade for Trout would take an unimaginable haul, and even if the Phillies are able to put together some sort of package to land Trout, going that route doesn't seem logical. The Phillies will still have to give Trout, who will be three years older in 2020 than Harper will be in 2018, a record contract. They will have to gut their farm system to do it, something they wouldn't have to do in signing Harper as a free-agent. And they will likely have to wait longer to trade for him, because he can't become a free-agent for two more years than Harper.
The one caveat to this is that the jury is still out to a degree on just how good Harper is. In 2015, Harper was a better player than Trout, batting .330, with 42 home runs and while slugging .649 and posting a 9.5 WAR, while Trout had a down season and "only" posted a 9.0 WAR. However, Harper, possibly due to playing through injuries, regressed in 2016, posting a 3.5 WAR and batting just .243. Trout has a 47.7 career WAR, while Harper has a 22.2 one.
So to a degree, Harper will have to prove over the course of the next two seasons that he's closer to the player that won the National League MVP in 2015 and looked like he was making good on his Hall of Fame potential. But if Harper's healthy, the guess here is that in a good lineup, so he's going to look much closer to the other worldly player that we saw in 2015. Remember, he's still just 24 years old.
If not, Harper's price may come down. If general manager Matt Klentak and the Phillies aren't able to land Harper, targeting a free-agent like Manny Machado, who is also eligible to become a free-agent like Harper after 2018, would fit the Phillies timeline better than waiting on the very outside change of eventually landing Trout.
Of course, nothing is guaranteed to the Phillies if Harper does eventually become a free-agent. It doesn't take a genius to see that the New York Yankees are positioning themselves to be able to spend in the great free-agent class of 2018. But the Phillies should be on the verge of returning to contention, if that haven't already, will probably have as much money to spend as anyone in the league and have a stadium that could allow Harper to chase Barry Bonds' all-time home run record. They should be able to be competitive in the Harper sweepstakes, should they choose to be.
The nuggets
- Cliff Lee's representatives made it known that he wanted to make a comeback at last year's MLB Winter Meetings and he never got particularly close to actually signing with a team. I wonder if Jimmy Rollins, who says he wants to play in 2017, won't end up in a similar situation this year.
- The Phillies reportedly "may be willing" to trade Odubel Herrera. I wouldn't hang the phone up if someone asked about Herrera, but I'd tread very cautiously, especially when you consider that he's under team control for four more seasons.
- The Phillies have a decision to make on whether to pick up Pete Mackanin's 2018 option or have him enter the 2017 season as a lame duck.
- I like the signing of Joaquin Benoit. The Phillies overworked both Jeanmar Gomez and Hector Neris in 2016, so they need other late-inning options in 2017.
