What are we to make of Padres' reported interest in Harper?

Here we are on the first day of February, various players around baseball are already starting to make their way to Florida and Arizona to get a jump start on spring training, and the news involving Bryce Harper isn't that he has signed with anyone but that he's meeting in Las Vegas with officials from the Padres.

Yes, it's been an awfully strange winter. And the Harper Free Agent Extravaganza hasn't followed a script anyone saw coming.

With the market for the star outfielder apparently nowhere close to as robust as he hoped, Harper is now taking a meeting with a team rarely associated with either winning or spending a lot of money. That meeting, which according to The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal took place Thursday night in Harper's hometown, left the baseball world scratching its collective head.

Are the Padres, who have lost 90-plus games each of the last three seasons and ranked 24th out of 30 major league clubs in 2018 payroll, actually serious about making a run at Harper? And if so, would Harper seriously consider signing with them?

Or is something else going on here, something beneath the surface that suggests a different story?

Some thoughts ...

* If the market for Harper really is as weak as it has been publicly portrayed, the only teams known to show real interest in him are the Nationals, Phillies and White Sox. So if that's really the case, why wouldn't a team like the Padres explore this previously unexpected possibility and see if there's a match?

* If you're Harper and your choices are Washington, Philadelphia and the South Side of Chicago, why wouldn't you think long and hard about spending the next decade living and playing in San Diego? A beautiful ballpark in a beautiful city that's close to home ... what's not to love about that?

* If you're Scott Boras and the market for your premier client isn't nearly as robust as you wanted it to be, why wouldn't you let it be known a surprise team is suddenly interested and willing to meet with him? Think that might make either one of the other contenders up their offer, or convince another club that's been on the fence to make its own last-minute play for Harper?

I've said this already this winter, but it bears repeating: Anything that's been put out there publicly about Harper has been put out there because someone wanted it out there. And anything that hasn't become public has been kept in the shadows because someone wanted to keep it in the shadows. This is one huge chess match taking place between executives from several teams, Harper's agent and the agents for the other top free agent still looking for work: Manny Machado.

What's it all mean? Are we any closer today to knowing where Harper is going to sign than we were before? Probably not.

If anything, the sense is that Harper isn't on the verge of making his decision, even though it's now been a full four months since the Nationals' season finale.

We don't know exactly what is going on that isn't being made public, but here's a relatively safe assumption: If Harper already had an acceptable offer on the table from a team he wanted to play for, he would've already signed on the dotted line and started making preparations to report to Florida or Arizona.

Instead, the free-agent sweepstakes that wouldn't end continues. And instead of getting ready for spring training, Harper still finds himself trying to find the perfect match from an imperfect group of suitors.