Bryce Harper Speaks Out On 'Wild' Comments by Phillies GM Dombrowski

It's not the sort of thing you usually hear a team executive say about one of his best players. Philadelphia Phillies head of baseball operations, Dave Dombrowski, said earlier this offseason that his superstar first baseman/outfielder wasn't "elite" like he usually is, in looking at his 2025 season. He even questioned whether the 33-year-old can get back to that level.

But the outspoken two-time MVP and eight-time All-Star isn't one to hold back his thoughts. So Harper opened up at Phillies camp this weekend, firing back at Dombrowski, calling the situation "wild."

Bryce Harper says it was kind of “wild” the way Phillies President Dave Dombrowski made his comments about Bryce’s season and that it was not elite.

Bryce says he is always available to anyone with the team and he had an understanding that everything would be kept “in house”… pic.twitter.com/MdzkjVII0l
— John Clark (@JClarkNBCS) February 15, 2026

For context, Dombrowski had said:

When I think of Bryce Harper, you think elite, you think of one of the top 10 players in baseball, and I don’t think it fit into that category.
Can he rise to the next level again? I don’t really know that answer.

Bryce Harper fires back at Phillies exec Dave Dombrowski

“My numbers weren’t where they needed to be,” Harper said on Sunday. “I know that, and I don’t need to be motivated to be great in my career or anything else. So that’s just not a motivating factor for me. For Dave to come out and say those things, it’s kind of wild to me still.

“I think the big thing for me was when we first met with this organization, it was, ‘Hey, we’re always going to keep things in-house, and we expect you to do the same thing,’ so when that didn’t happen, it kind of took me for a run a little bit, so I don’t know. It’s part of it, I guess. It was kind of a wild situation.”

A lot of players around baseball would kill to have the season that Harper had: 27 homers with an .844 OPS. But it's true that those numbers are far below the standard that he has always set. The .844 was his lowest in nine seasons. He has a .905 career OPS. He also went 3-for-15 with no RBIs in the Phils' four-game elimination at the hands of the LA Dodgers in the NLDS.

Harper still has six seasons remaining on his 13-year, $330 million contract with the Phillies. We'll see if he can get back to being "elite" going forward.