There's finally some excitement for baseball's offseason prize, Bryce Harper, but it might be too soon to share those "It's happening" meme's of Michael Scott. The bidding wars for Harper and Manny Machdo has turned into more of a silent auction, but Twitter rumors of Harper's 2019 destination being Philadelphia have been trending for the past 24-hours.
Although it's coming from fake Twitter accounts, Vegas betting odds and a video game maker – it can't be ignored.
First, over the weekend someone tweeted from the since-deleted Twitter account "@JeffEvans" claimed to work for a local ESPN radio affiliate in Philadelphia and said the Phillies and Harper's team had agreed to terms.
It wasn't true. The radio station contacted Twitter to kill the account and they've been in contact with the Phillies, says 97.3 ESPN program director Mike Gill. The tweet from the fake account spread pretty quickly as it was retweeted 730, after it was posted on Sunday night.
Then on Monday afternoon, MLB The Show is teasing some big news coming on Tuesday. The Twitter account for MLB The Show said "You'll want to keep an eye on this account tomorrow... just saying."
You'll want to keep an eye on this account tomorrow... just saying.Get hyped: https://t.co/MeSPqa1pm2 pic.twitter.com/TIBlOBgif0
— MLB The Show (@MLBTheShow)
January 28, 2019 Harper's image is going to be on the cover of "The Show 19," which will be released in March and typically the cover includes a player in his team's jersey. But we don't know yet what team Harper will be on in 2019. This is similar to what a NBA video game went though last summer with superstar LeBron James who was a free agent like Harper. This announcement could very well just be a release of what the video game cover will look like. NBA 2K decided to use just an image of James' face, with no jersey showing.
But who knows, maybe the cover will show Harper in a Phillies, Washington Nationals, St. Louis Cardinals or Los Angeles Dodgers jersey and that could be followed by an official release by the team that they've signed Harper.
And finally, the Harper rumors were continued when a major Vegas sportbook, OddsShark, changed its odd on the Phillies chances to win the 2019 World Series. Back
in October, the Phillies were +2000 odds and now they're at +1200 to win the World Series, tied with the Chicago Cubs and Cardinals for the fifth-best odds in baseball.
Odds to win the 2019 World Series (BetOnline):NYY +700BOS +750HOU/LAD +800CHC/PHI/STL +1200MIL +1400ATL/CLE/NYM +1600WAS +2000COL +2500CWS/CIN/LAA/OAK/TB +3300ARI/MIN/SEA +5000PIT/SD/TOR +6600SF/TEX +10000DET/KC/MIA +15000BAL +25000
— OddsShark (@OddsShark)
January 29, 2019 Could that be a Harper effect? Who knows...
The national writers who typically break these types of stories, Ken Rosenthal, Jon Morosi and others have been tweeted more about JT Realmuto than anything Harper related. So maybe all of this is nothing.
