PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA – OCTOBER 06: Bryce Harper #3 of the Philadelphia Phillies looks on during the first inning in game two of the National League Division Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Citizens Bank Park on October 06, 2025 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Emilee Chinn/Getty Images)
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The Philadelphia Phillies have a challenging task ahead of them this offseason.
The team’s consecutive playoff disappointments make it clear that it has to improve if it hopes to capture a World Series championship. But the roster of incumbent veteran stars and their long-term salaries make any significant changes difficult to execute.
Perhaps the best known of those stars, and certainly the highest paid thanks to a $330 million contract, is first baseman Bryce Harper. Harper joined the Phillies in 2019 after seven seasons with the Washington Nationals.
And while he was on the Nationals, he offered some important lessons to an opposing slugger who now plays for the Phillies’ biggest division rival, the New York Mets.
“The first guy who always caught my attention was Bryce Harper when I got up to the league,” Mets outfielder Juan Soto said when asked which former teammates taught him the most when he first joined the Nationals at age 19, per a video shared by Major League Baseball. “He was a guy who grabbed me under his wing.”
In the video, Soto also credits Nationals veterans like Max Scherzer and Anthony Rendon for helping him at the start of his career. But he sent a five-word message on Harper that summed up their relationship during his rookie season:
“He tried to help me,” Soto said in the video.
Soto’s fondness for his tutelage under Harper is notable as both sluggers have become some of the highest paid and most accomplished individual players in the sport since parting ways. Interestingly enough, the two stayed within the National League East after leaving the Nationals, though Soto had brief stints with the San Diego Padres and New York Yankees before signing his long-term deal with the Mets.
In several ways, Soto and Harper are still linked well beyond Soto’s rookie season. And as the two battle for supremacy in the division for years to come, Harper might come to regret all of the help he gave his former teammate.
“For one season, Harper was one of the veteran voices of the nationals in then-rookie Juan Soto’s ear as he went on to be runner-up for Rookie of the Year,” Bridget Reilly wrote for the New York Post. “For 102 of those games, they played in the outfield together.”
Harper might have moved to first base since then and Soto seems destined for a designated hitter role sooner or later. But no matter where their diverting paths are headed next, the pair of superstar sluggers will always have that one season when a teenage Soto began his path to MLB stardom under the wing of an already accomplished Bryce Harper.