Great News: Bryce Harper And Dave Dombrowski Reportedly Hate The Shit Out Of Each Other Still
The Athletic -- The star first baseman, Bryce Harper, is still bickering with the headstrong president of baseball operations, Dave Dombrowski. Then, the interim manager cannonballed into the fray with some strong words for Harper before Wednesday’s game. The Phillies need help at the trade deadline. Everyone knows it. Harper just chose to say it out loud Tuesday night. That annoyed team officials.
…Harper and Dombrowski have not repaired their relationship. That might not matter except for brief, uncomfortable moments like this. Harper is under contract through 2031. Dombrowski is signed through 2027, although the Phillies are expected to extend him in the near future while perhaps publicly disclosing a succession plan.
Neither Harper nor Dombrowski, two powerful men with huge egos, particularly cares for the other. They probably should figure it out.
Not to get too dramatic here, but there comes a time. For everything in life, there comes a time.
And when that time arrives, you just feel it. You know that it's here. And that time is now for the Philadelphia Phillies. This thing is over. Because there's just no world in which the face of your franchise is in the midst of a 10-month long beef with your president of baseball operations, and that team then goes on to win a World Series.
I guess we should have seen this coming last April when dipshit Dombrowski opened his mouth in the first place, wondering out loud if Bryce Harper could return to being an elite player again. Bryce Harper has been "the guy" since he's been 15-years-old. Honestly, he's probably been "the guy" well before that. He has been labeled a baseball prodigy for practically 2 decades at this point, and guys like that are always going to have massive egos. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's just the natural way a teenage kid is going to handle being told he's the greatest baseball player to ever walk the Earth. Guys like Bryce Harper have been told they are so great their entire life, so they aren't going to handle it well when someone like Dave Dombrowski comes along and publicly questions their greatness. Bryce Harper was always going to hate the shit out of Dave Dombrowski the moment those words came out of his mouth.
Which is why Dombrowski is such a dumbass in the first place. It was such an unnecessary thing to say publicly, and now it's caused two of the most powerful men in the organization to seemingly be at odds with one another. And here's the thing--it's not like a 1st baseman and a president of baseball operations need to be best friends. I mean how often are these two interacting with each other on a day-to-day basis? Probably hardly ever.
But this trade deadline is where the powder keg has an opportunity to blow. Because Bryce isn't going to shy away from saying this team needs to make some meaningful additions to the roster at the deadline, because he doesn't care if that puts pressure on Dombrowski. At the same time, Dombrowski now might not want to cave to Harper's complaints about the roster. He can keep the roster as it is, and put all the failure of this team on the players. All in the meanwhile, the rest of the team is completely caught in the middle. Your star player is saying the team isn't good enough, and the president of baseball ops is saying he doesn't care enough about this team to make any drastic moves. Morale has to be at an all time low.
Can't wait to see how this one all comes to an end.