Is it time to count out Touchdown Scott Boras?
Boy, it seems like Matt Chapman, Cody Bellinger, and Blake Snell are taking a while to sign, huh?
Whenever I talk about Scott Boras, there’s this little nagging thought in the back of my mind. It’s there when I acknowledge that he’s right to get his clients as much money as possible. It’s there when I admire the ingenuity of his various schemes to get his players in the draft better deals than would be possible if they played by the rules. It’s definitely there when he does his press conference at the Winter Meetings and lays on pun after pun to get you, and more importantly, team owners, to remember the players he represents.
The nagging thought is, “Yeah, but he sucks.”
He does not suck at his job. He is great at his job. No one has ever been better at the job of baseball agent than Scott Boras, and I don’t think it’s really debatable. And that job is a good one: at its core, his mission is to ensure that as much revenue as possible generated from baseball players goes to baseball players. This is a net positive, what with labor being entitled to all it creates and whatnot.
And yet…it’s exhausting. Boras excels at exploiting loopholes and pushing boundaries and going dark for exactly the right amount of time to make a team nervous without forcing them to settle on other plans. That’s all a big part of what makes him good at his job, but it’s also frustrating. What do you mean the Giants couldn’t sign Matt White because of some bullshit? What asshole made that happen?
(It worked out well for Matt White, admittedly, who ended up making $10 million without ever throwing a pitch in the majors. Scott Boras did his job!)
So while I recognize that Boras is generally making baseball more just to the players, there is still a big part of me that wants to see him with egg on his face. His face just seems so eggable! And here we are, deep into baseball’s offseason, and two Boras clients seeking big money don’t seem anywhere close to signing. Is this it? Are we seeing it? Are Matt Chapman, Cody Bellinger, and Blake Snell ushering in the Year Of The Egg?
It’s dangerous to assume that Scott Boras won’t get his way. Back in 2013, the New York Daily News said that “The days of Scott Boras negotiating mega-contracts for Major League Baseball stars may be over” due to the then-new qualifying offer, and I think it’s safe to say now, after billions of dollars of money thrown at Boras clients, that they may have gotten that one wrong.
But it has happened before. After 2008, Boras was looking for at least a 4-year deal for Manny Ramirez, who ended up settling for two years. Before 2019, Boras pushed for something long-term for Mike Moustakas, who ended up signing a one-year deal with the Brewers to prove himself before going to the Reds for three. And after Jake Arrieta’s Cy Young year, Boras turned down an extension with the Cubs, rolling the dice that he could get a much larger deal on the open market. Arrieta was never the same, and he accepted a smaller deal with the Phillies, where he ended up pitching very badly.
Scott Boras is fallible. He can make mistakes. It’s entirely possible he’s misreading the market for one or all of his clients right now. Like, right this second! It could totally be happening!
Or it’ll work perfectly and he’ll maximize their contracts. We just don’t know!
Look, it sure seems like Boras is overreaching by demanding a reported 9 years and $270 million for Blake Snell, a pitcher who will unequivocally not be worth that. But he already got a 5 year, $150 million offer from the Yankees, and Snell will almost certainly not be worth that either. It’s entirely possible that Boras’s calculation here is right, and dragging this thing out a little bit longer will get a sixth year from someone.
It’s also possible that Boras wants too much from the Cubs for Bellinger. Reports are that he’s asking for more than $200 million, and that the Cubs aren’t likely to match that, which would open things up for another team (the Blue Jays, perhaps, or maybe the Giants), except other teams are looking to spend even less on him. It’s hard to have a bidding war when no one is willing to put in an opening bid, but once he can get a team to take that first shot, well, who’s to say Boras won’t get another team to return fire and drive that price up?
And then there’s Matt Chapman. Everyone has been assuming Chappie will end up on the Giants since free agency started, everyone is still assuming that, and everyone will probably continue assuming that even if he signs with the Cubs. According to the Ghost of Bay Area Bob Twitter account, the Giants’ offer to Chapman is over $100 million (but probably not much over), and since we don’t have any other sources, sure, we’ll go with that. That’s a far cry from what we all expected at the start of the offseason — I was thinking 6 years at more than $20 million per year — and it might not be enough for Boras, but it’s still, like, not a small amount of money.
There is absolutely a large part of me rooting for Boras to fail. There is also a large part of me rooting for him to succeed, and get any of them to sign with the Dodgers, and then for the players to fail, but I know that one’s not very likely. But, of course, the best thing would be for him to succeed and the players to succeed too, because that keeps the money flowing away from the owners and to the place where it should actually go.
Paying $200 million for Cody Bellinger to probably improve your team is easier to sell than paying $200 million for Cody Bellinger to maybe improve your team.Bellinger getting paid and doing well makes it likelier for the next free agent to get paid and hopefully do well, and so on. This should be what everyone wants. I’m sure every team has a finance guy who can make the argument that spending money on labor isn’t worth it in basically any circumstance, but that argument gets weaker when the wins come.
It’s a good thing for players to do well. It’s especially a good thing for well paid players to do well. The game’s financial system rests on exactly that happening. But still, I have that seed of doubt that any of them will be particularly good this year. And I kind of think Scott Boras would have it coming, even if I also know that I don’t really want it to happen.