Bryce Harper is on the trade block

This is not a drill.

Mark Feinsand dropped the bomb on Twitter Monday night.

According to a source, the Nationals are making it known to other teams that Bryce Harper is indeed available.

— Mark Feinsand (@Feinsand) July 31, 2018

Sending a package of highly touted prospects to a division rival for a two month rental of a player who could cash in the biggest contract in baseball history this upcoming offseason will tiptoe the line between being bold and being outright stupid.

So you send Adonis Medina and three (or more?) of the rest of the top 10 prospects to the Nationals for two months of Bryce Harper. Sure you could swoon him and try to sign him to a long, lucrative contract, but there’s also the chance he doesn’t sign here long term and you just made a division rival that much scarier by making their farm system deeper with nothing but the 2018 season to show for it. Is that worth it?

That’s enough devil’s advocate for me. If I’m Matt Klentak I’d outright offer the Machado package and hope for the best. Remember, the Phillies once traded Carlos Carrasco, Jason Knapp, Lou Marson and Jason Donald to the Indians for Cliff Lee. The following year they traded Kyle Drabek, Michael Taylor and Travis d’Arnaud for Roy Halladay. Sometimes prospects don’t always pan out. The one thing that is certain – Bryce Harper can hit. I know he’s only averaging .220 this season, but that’s a fluke in my opinion. At just 25 years old, only 5 months older than Rhys Hoskins, he can improve on what he did this season to date. It’d be worth while to kick the tires at the very least. Who knows, maybe he’ll fall in love with the culture here and stay around and pull a reverse Jayson Werth and haunt the Nationals for the next ten years while putting on show after show at Citizen’s Bank Park. A man can dream, right?

You can follow Anthony Mazziotti on Twitter (@AntMazziotti) and e-mail him at [email protected].

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