Bryce Harper, Mike Rizzo Turn Baseball Business into Pointless Personal Spat

You have to wonder at this point if Bryce Harper and the Washington Nationals are ever going to get along.

If you paid attention during the 2014 season, you'll know of a couple incidents where things got tense between Harper and Nationals manager Matt Williams. If you've been paying less attention recently, you might not know there's now tension between Harper and the Nationals front office.

More than there should be, really.

As James Wagner of The Washington Post reported, Harper and the Nationals are scheduled for a grievance hearing Tuesday in New York. Because it's over a contract dispute, the tension between the two sides should be strictly a business matter.

But now, it's needlessly become a personal matter.

When the Nationals held their annual NatsFest on Saturday, Harper was a notable no-show. This is despite the fact that, according to MLB.com's Bill Ladson, the star 22-year-old left fielder was scheduled to attend. At this, Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo was not pleased.

"We are disappointed that he is not here," Rizzo said, "but he chose not to be here because of the grievance."

This forced Harper to counter with a statement:

"

I have attended NatsFest each year and always enjoyed my experience with the fans, but was unable to attend this year's event due to matters out of my control. I look forward to next year's NatsFest.

"

The phrase "matters out of my control" is what's key here. That's Harper indicating that the very existence of the grievance means he had no choice but to back out of attending.

So on one side, you have an executive painting a player as a bad guy. On the other, you have a player insinuating he's actually the victim. Which, naturally, means it's the team that's the bad guy.

Meanwhile, on the outside looking in, we are wondering why any of this is necessary.

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If you're unaware what the grievance between Harper and the Nationals is all about, it stems from when Harper first signed with the team after he was drafted No. 1 overall in 2010.

The five-year, $9.9 million contact Harper signed in August of 2010 was negotiated under duress, and I don't say that just because Scott Boras was involved. The two sides couldn't reach an agreement until mere seconds before the deadline for teams to sign their draft picks.

The 2015 season is supposed to be the last guaranteed year of that contract, one that will pay Harper a base salary of $1.5 million. But Boras contends that the Nationals orally agreed to an opt-out that Harper could exercise that would allow him to enter arbitration if he gained Super Two eligibility. Because the Nationals contend they did no such thing, you have the makings for a grievance.

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If Harper were to enter arbitration this winter, MLB Trade Rumors projects he would be granted a $1 million raise to $2.5 million. From there, his salaries would only climb higher in three additional years of arbitration eligibility before free agency after 2018.

As such, you can see why Harper—the owner of an .816 career OPS and 55 home runs in three seasons—wants what he wants and why the Nationals are resistant. One side wants to get paid, and the other wants to save. It's just business.

That is, it could have been just business, anyway.

Harper didn't need Rizzo's help to come off in a negative light by skipping NatsFest. The idea was presumably to avoid questions about the issue while also showing the Nationals he means business. But instead, he foolishly put himself in a position to come off as a pouty child with a grudge.

That's not a good look on any player, but it's an especially bad look on Harper.

If there's something to what the Post's Thomas Boswell wrote in June about Harper's teammates wanting him to "tone down his flamboyant act and fit more smoothly with a vet clubhouse," his NatsFest no-show is something that could linger in the minds of his peers.

Also, it pretty much goes without saying that he's not asking to be in the organization's good graces. Thanks to Rizzo, however, that's a road that now goes both ways.

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It's bad enough that the Nationals are even putting up a fight against Boras and Harper's claim that they agreed to an opt-out back in 2010. Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com had the right of it when he wrote the Nats "stand little to gain by antagonizing a potential franchise player."

Harper's going to be really expensive whether he gets to arbitration now or later, after all. And by refusing to go ahead and pay him now, the Nationals are refusing a chance to butter Harper up for a Giancarlo Stanton-esque contract extension that could keep him in D.C. for life.

Because the Nats are already asking for trouble down the road, the safe thing for Rizzo to do at NatsFest was to take the high road and deflect questions about Harper's absence.

But by calling attention to the grievance as the reason for it, Rizzo painted him as a guy putting his own greed before his relationship with the fans. Regardless of whether that's the essential truth of the matter, it's something Harper may not forget.

In all, what should have been a boring story about a player wanting to get paid and his team wanting to save money has become a story about a player throwing a hissy fit and his team trying to throw him under the bus.

That's what it looks like when a business story turns personal, and nobody ever looks good when it happens. So it goes for Harper and the Nationals. Whereas those who cared to look before could see where each was coming from, now the big picture is clouded by both sides looking like jerks who should have known better.

All you can do is shake your head. Well, that and two other things:

Grant that it's a shame this had to happen, and hope that this is the last we have to speak of it.

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