Category: Sports

CLEARWATER, Fla. — Bryce Harper doesn’t want to hear anything about the Dodgers’ nearly $400 million dollar roster being “bad for baseball.”

Following two straight World Series titles — eliminating the Phillies en route to their latest — and with their record-setting payroll, the Dodgers are viewed by some as baseball’s villains, propelling the sport toward a work stoppage in the 2027 labor negotiations.

Harper has a different opinion.

“It bothers me when everybody talks about the Dodgers spending money,” Harper said Sunday. “No, they draft, they develop, they do it the right way. … Each team in baseball has an opportunity to do the same thing. Maybe not at the upper echelon of money, but they can draft, they can develop, they can trade.

“I think a lot of teams can do that in baseball, and they should.”

Harper believes that the Phillies’ roster still stacks up with other top teams, including the Dodgers. In his first media scrum of the 2026 season on Sunday, he said that the expectation for the Phillies this year — and every year — is to win the National League East and make a deep postseason run afterward.

The Phillies have won the division the last two seasons, and also increased their regular-season win total from 95 in 2024 to 96 last season. But the playoff results have not followed, with two straight exits in the NL Divisional Series.

“The Mets got better, getting Freddy Peralta and a couple other guys on their club,” Harper said. “I mean, the Braves are going to be really good again this year, getting a lot of their guys back, they’re going to be healthy. And so obviously, I feel like the East is a juggernaut. So just got to go and play our game. Understand we’re a really good team and go from there.”

A neon green sign in the shape of the Phanatic hangs from the top of Harper’s locker in the BayCare Ballpark clubhouse. It was illuminated Sunday, indicating that the first baseman — and the rest of the remaining position players — had reported to the complex. The team’s first full-squad workout is scheduled for Monday.

Harper’s locker is next to the one belonging to 21-year-old shortstop prospect Aidan Miller.

“He’s a great kid,” Harper said of Miller. “He understands what he has to do. Obviously, everybody in this organization is super-excited about it. I talked to him last year a lot. I talked with him this year a little bit already. He has a bright future in this organization. I think it just kind of gets it going a little bit more.”

Harper is also looking forward to seeing other younger players, especially outfielder Justin Crawford and pitcher Andrew Painter, get an opportunity with the major league club this season. The Phillies have not had a rookie start on opening day since 2022, when Bryson Stott first broke camp with the team.

“New blood, man,” Harper said. “It’s good.”

He also acknowledged that to reach that goal of winning the NL East, and the quest for a World Series run beyond that, those rookies will need to step up. Crawford is expected to be the Phillies’ everyday center fielder. There is also an opening for Painter in the starting rotation, after Ranger Suárez’s free agency departure and with Zack Wheeler doubtful for opening day as he continues to rehab from thoracic outlet decompression surgery.

Painter, the Phillies’ top pitching prospect, posted a 5.49 ERA last season in the minors, his first back from Tommy John surgery.

“I’m hoping he bounces back this year, and we need him to,” Harper said. “We have no idea what Wheels is going to look like. We all hope that obviously, Wheels comes back and is Zack Wheeler, because there’s nobody better in baseball when he’s going good. But we have no idea.

“When you lose a guy like Ranger, that’s a really tough thing. So you’re expected to fill the shoes of two guys that are really, really good. So I hope he can do it, and we definitely need him to do it.”

CLEARWATER, Fla. — Bryce Harper touched down in Phillies camp, pulled on a black T-shirt — no, not the black T-shirt that went viral over the holidays — and summarized one of the weirdest weeks in an offseason of his career.

“For Dave [Dombrowski] to come out and say those things,“ Harper said, ”it’s kind of wild to me still.”

Key word: Still. Because this was Sunday, 122 days after the Phillies’ highest-ranking baseball official gave a 90-second answer 34 minutes into a 54-minute news conference about whether Harper’s good-but-not-great 2025 season was a one-off or the start of a downward trend.

Pardon the rehashed sound bite, but well, here goes: “Of course he’s still a quality player,” Dombrowski said, “still an All-Star-caliber player. He didn’t have an elite season like he has had in the past. And I guess we only find out if he becomes elite [again], or if he continues to be good.”

Cue the hysteria, fomented by sports-talk radio and social media. And a candid answer to a good question exploded into unfounded speculation that the Phillies would consider trading Harper. (For what it’s worth, John Middleton is clear about wanting Harper to go into the Hall of Fame with a “P” on his plaque.)

Harper is self-aware. He wasn’t satisfied with last season. There were factors, including an inflamed right wrist that caused him to miss 22 games. But he also swung at a career-high rate of pitches out of the zone, a problem given that Harper saw fewer strikes than any hitter in baseball. He also delivered fewer hits in the clutch than ever before.

“Obviously,” he said after digesting it for four months, “not the best year of my career.”

But the substance of Dombrowski’s comments didn’t bother Harper as much as the forum.

“The big thing for me was, when we first met with this organization [in 2019] it was, ‘Hey, we’re always going to keep things in-house, and we expect you to do the same thing,’” Harper said. “So, when that didn’t happen, it kind of took me for a run a little bit. I don’t know.

“It’s kind of a wild situation, that even happening.”

Dombrowski reached out to Harper about 10 days later. The whole affair seemed to be over. Then, in December, a video posted to Harper’s TikTok account showing him working out while wearing a T-shirt with two words across the chest: “NOT ELITE.”

Is Harper using Dombrowski’s critique as motivation?

“I don’t need to be motivated to be great in my career or anything else,“ Harper said. ”That’s just not a motivating factor for me.”

So, why the T-shirt?

“They made the shirts for me and I wore them,” he said. “If they’re going to make them, I’m going to wear them.”

OK then. Just don’t be surprised if Harper channels all of this into an MVP-worthy season. Because elite athletes have a way of turning more innocuous slights into fuel. Michael Jordan was notorious for it. Tom Brady, too.

The last time anyone publicly poked Harper, he stared a hole through then-Braves shortstop Orlando Arcia after homering twice in Game 3 of the 2023 divisional playoffs.

“I just know his mindset is he wants to perform,“ manager Rob Thomson said. “He loves playing the game. He wants to perform for himself, for his teammates, for the organization, for the city of Philadelphia. With the way he’s come into camp, the shape that he’s in, we’ve got to keep him healthy and I think he’s going to have a huge year.”

Harper does appear to have bulked up since last season. Other than hiring a new trainer, he said he didn’t change much about his offseason program at home in Nashville.

The wrist, which hitting coach Kevin Long said bothered Harper before he went on the injured list last season, is fully healed. Harper said he hasn’t felt pain since June.

“Really happy about that,” he said. “My offseason was pretty similar to what I do each offseason. Just trying to make sure my body is where it needs to be. Just pretty much all the same stuff, getting in and making sure I’m ready to go.”

One notable difference: Harper will play for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic. He wanted to play three years ago but was recovering from Tommy John elbow surgery. He hasn’t represented the country since he was a teenager.

Maybe the stakes of the WBC will be invigorating for Harper, never a fan of the tedium of spring training.

“I feel like I’m pretty excited to play,” Harper said. “My face might not look it a lot of times. But I’m excited to be out there. I love being part of the culture and the group and Philly baseball. I don’t want that to ever not be the notion. I don’t smile all the time or I don’t laugh all the time, but I enjoy playing this game.”

With baseball returning to the Olympics in 2028 in Los Angeles, MLB is considering allowing players to compete, a scenario for which Harper has long lobbied.

In that case, the WBC would be a precursor. And Team USA is loaded. For years, many of the sport’s top starting pitchers resisted the WBC. But Tarik Skubal and Paul Skenes are at the top of the U.S. team’s rotation.

“Being able to take a step back and act like you are 16, 17, 18 years old again playing with your buddies,” Harper said, “really looking forward to it.

“And having Aaron Judge hitting behind me is going to be a lot of fun as well.”

Which brings up another question that looms over Harper this spring: How will the Phillies protect him in the lineup?

Thomson has considered putting Kyle Schwarber behind Harper. It was the other way around for most of last season. But then who will protect Schwarber? Alec Bohm and new right fielder Adolis García are the leading cleanup-hitter candidates.

“The four spot has a huge impact,” Harper said. “I think the numbers in the four spot weren’t very good last year for our whole team. Whoever’s in that four spot is going to have a big job to do.”

As far as his relationship with Dombrowski?

“We keep things in-house, that’s just how it’s always been, and in that moment, it just didn’t happen,” Harper said. “I think my locker is always open for them to come and talk to me, and vice versa. It is what it is right now.”