{"id":575482,"date":"2026-02-16T12:17:32","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T12:17:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/575482\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T12:17:32","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T12:17:32","slug":"phillies-bryce-harper-speaks-out-on-wild-dave-dombrowski-comments-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/575482\/","title":{"rendered":"Phillies\u2019 Bryce Harper speaks out on \u2018wild\u2019 Dave Dombrowski comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bryce Harper is not using Dave Dombrowski\u2019s assessment of his play last season as motivation for 2026, but the Phillies first baseman still thinks it\u2019s \u201cwild\u201d that the team president went public last October with claims that the two-time MVP was not \u201celite\u201d <\/a>last season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t get motivated by that kind of stuff. For me, it was kind of wild the whole situation of that happening,\u201d Harper told reporters at Phillies training camp in Clearwater. \u201cI think the big thing for me was when we first met with this organization it was, \u2018Hey, we\u2019re always going to keep things in-house, and we expect you to do the same thing,\u2019 so when that didn\u2019t happen, it kind of took me for a run a little bit, so I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s part of it, I guess. It was kind of a wild situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Bryce<\/p>\n

Bryce Harper of the Philadelphia Phillies fist-bumps teammates Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026. AP<\/p>\n

Harper, who has six seasons remaining on a 13-year contract worth $330 million, posted an .844 OPS \u2014 his lowest since 2016 \u2014 with 27 home runs and 75 RBIs in 580 plate appearances last season.<\/p>\n

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Shortly after the eight-time All-Star also went 3-for-15 with zero RBIs in a four-game elimination by the Dodgers in the NL Division Series, Dombrowski described Harper\u2019s 2025 performance as substandard.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan he rise to the next level again? I don\u2019t really know that answer,\u201d Dombrowski said. \u201cHe\u2019s the one that will dictate that more than anything else. I don\u2019t think he\u2019s content with the year that he had.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgain, it wasn\u2019t a bad year. But when I think of Bryce Harper, you think elite, you think of one of the top 10 players in baseball, and I don\u2019t think it fit into that category.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harper, who missed about a month last season with a wrist injury, acknowledged Sunday that he \u201cobviously didn\u2019t have the year \u2026 or postseason that I wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Philadelphia<\/p>\n

Philadelphia Phillies President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski before the game against the New York Mets at Citizens Bank Park. USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Con<\/p>\n

\u201cMy numbers weren\u2019t where they needed to be,\u201d he added. \u201cI know that, and I don\u2019t need to be motivated to be great in my career or anything else. So that\u2019s just not a motivating factor for me. For Dave to come out and say those things, it\u2019s kind of wild to me still.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The 33-year-old Harper has a .280 career batting average with 363 homers and a .905 OPS over 14 seasons in MLB, seven with the Nationals and the last seven with the Phillies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bryce Harper is not using Dave Dombrowski\u2019s assessment of his play last season as motivation for 2026, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2397],"tags":[5,1207,554,39,4,61,144,25,4216,40,75471],"class_list":{"0":"post-575482","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-phillies","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-bryce-harper","10":"tag-dave-dombrowski","11":"tag-dodgers","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-new-york-mets","14":"tag-philadelphia","15":"tag-philadelphia-phillies","16":"tag-philadelphiaphillies","17":"tag-phillies","18":"tag-wild-situation"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116080270220808093","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}