Bryce Harper seems to be open to some seasonal work in Japan:

Well this is quite the statement. You think Rob Manfred sleeps better knowing every baseball fan and player hates him? He has to, right? It’s the only reason why a lockout which was self-inflicted by MLB and the owners makes sense. They had the last year to hammer out even a little bit of progress for each side and every time the owners and MLBPA met, they just argued back and forth and nothing got done. Revenues have skyrocketed while player salaries have diminished. There are quotes from anonymous GMs about how unfair manipulating service time is, but what are they supposed to do?. It sucks for everyone involved, and having the reigning NL MVP and one of the faces of baseball openly campaigning to play overseas should add to the embarrassment. Owners don’t care though. All they care about is getting off the hook from some players making $30 million a year for as long as the lockout lasts while increasing franchise values:

One good thing that would come out of Bryce Harper playing in Japan is maybe we can get him on one of those crazy Japanese gameshows like “Hole in the Wall” –

P.S. Bob Wankel was on the podcast last week to talk about the MLB lockout (starts at 1:03:00). That was five days ago and there was genuine optimism in his voice that a deal would get done. Since then things have completely spiraled in the other direction: