How Scott Boras became the most hated man in baseball

It’s not often that a team rises to power in baseball with the way the economic system is set up.  Those at the bottom of the food chain simply act as a feeder system for those on top.  When one of those clubs finally amasses enough talent to do something, their success is rarely sustained.  Which is why the Tigers ascendance is so stunning.  They have collected the perfect blend of youth and experience, and they have a plethora of talent in their minor league system.  This isn’t a mere aberration, they are here to stay.

Plenty of people played a part in this turnaround, but no one was more responsible than super-agent Scott Boras.  That’s what he can do for a team, and it’s why he’s considered the most powerful figure in sports.  With more than 140 of baseball’s finest players and prospects under his reign, he’s gained more control than Bud Selig.  If you’re on his good side you have unlimited access to his stable of thoroughbreds. Meaning you can draft who you want, and when one of his guys are on the market maybe you get preference.  Of course a friend like that doesn’t come for free, and believe me he’s not cheap. 

The reach and pull that he has on the game is unprecedented, his presence looms over every front-office in the league like a crucifix in a church, and unfortunately he knows this and has let it get to his head.  Free-agency and agents are a part of the game.  Players should be able to chose their destinations and be paid what they are worth, just like every working man.  Boras has been a catalyst in this process, but it has gotten out of hand.  I don’t care that Alex Rodriguez makes more in an inning than I do in a year.  He’s the main draw in a billion dollar show, we don’t count musicians’ or actors’ money, so why athletes?  What I do have a problem with is the fact that not everyone can afford him.  You never hear football teams saying someone is too rich for us, and if they do, it’s because they are already loaded with superstars.  Same goes for basketball.  If a team has zero talent then they should have a chance to at least enter a bid.  Not in baseball

John Schuerholz, current president and former general manager of the Braves, is very passionate about the issue, and certainly isn’t short on opinions.

“I think it’s obnoxious [to pay a player $30 million a year]. I admire and respect Alex Rodriguez as much as any ball player that has played the game. But for someone to suggest that this is a valid salary level for a professional athlete, no matter what kind of voodoo economics they can do in analyzing the books of MLB, it’s absolutely asinine. It only takes one team to have the wherewithal with that player, and then that player and his representatives think ‘Well, this is what the market value is.’ It’s crazy, and so is that level of compensation.”

A revenue sharing system reflective of that of the NFL would be the proper answer, but Boras’ practices have magnified the league’s economic dereliction and furthered the sense of hierarchy between clubs.  In 2004 Boras’ 65-man stable brought home a collective $230 million- - an average annual salary of more than $3.5 million, well above the league average of $2.5 million.  By driving up the price on players, and creating the first $100 million and $200 million man in the process, he has manufactured a large imbalance between rich and poor teams, distrust between players and owners, and a trend to judge oneself solely by the number of zeroes on their paycheck.  In a nutshell, everything that is wrong with the sport, short of steroid use. 

It’s got to the point that some teams won’t even negotiate with a Boras client.  The Braves have announced that they will not resign the face of their franchise, Andruw Jones, who is coming off the worst season of his career.  The Braves would have liked to keep him around, but, they refuse to pay the $20 million annually that Boras is seeking for his client after he hit .222 this year.  This is a what have you done lately business, and lately Jones has shown little more ability that a minor league hitter.  It’s the same mentality that allows an average player to cash in after a huge contract year.  Schuerholz was looking to come down from the $14 million Jones made this year, or do something incentive laden to protect his investment, but they never made it to the table.

“When he presented us with that kind of offer with Andruw Jones, we found it so ridiculous and obnoxious we didn’t even respond. It didn’t even rise to the level of requiring a response. It’s just idiotic. And I suppose there is this theory of some agents out there, that as long as there is one person that has idiotic thinking, that’s all they need because it drives the market to where they want it to go. But there’s no validity to it at all.”

Several teams share this same mentality and try to circumvent Boras and his notorious books at all costs.  If you haven’t heard of the ‘books’, they contain studies conducted by his staff of former NASA programmers and Ivy League graduates.  The credentials might look impressive on paper, but in reality they hold no weight.   Timing is everything though.  Fresh off a career year in 2004 Boras presented a book on, then 25-year-old, Adrian Beltre predicting a Hall-of-Fame career.  He argued that his career numbers would surpass those of the best third basemen ever:  George Brett, Eddie Mathews, and Mike Schmidt.  That year Beltre hit .334 with 48 homers and 121 RBI, allowing him to sign a five year, $64 million contract.  Prior to that season he had never reached .300, 30, or 100, and he hasn’t since. 

The latest edition of these studies projects that Alex Rodriguez will become the all-time hits and home run leader while playing late into his forties.  It also states that he will produce over a billion dollars for whatever team he signs for through the course of his next contract.

Basically Boras has a working relationship with about ten teams: Detroit, Chicago (NL), Boston, Seattle, Arizona, Kansas City, and either of the LA or New York destinations.  Of course he has done deals with others, but they try to avoid him at all costs.  It is believed that Carlos Lee fired Boras a day after signing with him because he knew that Astros GM Drayton McClane refused to work with him after he got hosed on the Carlos Beltran deal.  It didn’t help that he publicly ridiculed the man following these talks, stating that when he told him that he needed to come up from the $75 million he was offering, McClane’s voice would go up in pitch as he pleaded, “this is a lot of money.”   If nixing a seven year $105 million dollar offer from his hometown club in favor of $119 the Mets gave him wasn’t bad enough, the jokes put it over the top. 

Florida also had a similar experience with Boras, they believed they had a deal in place for Ivan Rodriguez, so they dealt Derrek Lee to the Cubs, only to have Boras pull him to Detroit a year later. 

In 2005 the Marlins were ready to select Craig Hansen from Saint John’s in the first round of the draft.  Owner Jeffrey Loria personally called him prior to the draft, because he knew of Boras’ practices, and told him he was ready to offer him a $1.8 million signing bonus and an immediate call up to the major leagues.  The catch?  He had to leave his ‘advisor’ behind.  Boras was unhappy that they would try to go over him, so he called Loria and flipped out.  The Marlins ended up drafting Chris Volstad, a right-handed pitcher from Palm Beach Gardens High School. 

This is where Boras’ real power lies, in the amateur draft, but depending on how you view the situation he is either a hero or a villain. 

In 1965 Major League baseball instituted the amateur draft to keep from bidding up the value of top prospects.  While the reserve clause bound players to their organization for life upon signing their first contract, amateur players remained free to sign with whichever club offered the most money.  This freedom allowed untested 18-year-olds to sign for more up-from cash than a veteran could earn in ten years.  But after Rick Reinhardt demanded a $205,000 singing bonus from the Angels in1964, MLB decided to eradicate this free market.

The result was the draft, in it’s first year #1 pick Rick Monday signed for $104,000.  In 1982, the year Boras became a sports agent, Shawon Dunston got $150,000, by which time, according to Boras, salaries had increased 10 times and franchise values by 15.

“That’s when we realized, uh-oh, what we have here is a servitude,” explained Boras.  “They have no union.  They have no representation.  They have nothing.  So, this element of my reputation, you have to remember when I came in 1982, this had been static for 17 years.  My reputation was not brought to these teams by Major League contracts’ it was brought by defending young men.”

The next year the charades began with Boras’ first client, Tim Belcher, the Minnestoa Twins top pick.  He advised his client to refuse the standardized $125,000 signing bonus and hold out.  Six months later Belcher was selected by the Yankees in a supplemental draft.  He would never pitch for them, but the mentality was born and the way owners compensate their players would be redefined.

It was admirable then, but his antics have grown out of control. Just through his presence he has been able to manipulate the landscape of baseball, and to an extent, can control where his players go.  The draft allows major league clubs to obtain exclusive negotiating rights to players completing their senior year of high school.  If a player decides to attend college he can then be drafted after his junior year.  The drafting club retains exclusive negotiating rights until one week before the next draft, in which the player may be selected again.  The rules defined draft-eligible players to include those who have never signed a professional contract.  When they were written professional baseball only included Major League Baseball itself, but when the Northern League and other leagues were formed, the rules weren’t amended.  A loophole was found.

This gave Boras a new leveraging chip, one that would take him from a shrewd business man to the most notorious man in baseball.  In 1994 Jason Varitek, a Georgia Tech Senior, was considered the best catcher in the draft.  The Mariners took him in the first round, but refused to meet his advisor’s asking price, so he spurned them and signed with the St. Paul Saints of the independent Northern League.  Boras argued that since he had signed a professional contract he would become an unrestricted free agent one week before the 1995 draft, as the rules state.  The Mariners averted a showdown by signing him a week before the deadline.

He again tried this tactic in 1997 with JD Drew who was made the second overall pick by the Phillies.  Boras demanded $11 million, but was countered with a firm $2.05 million offer.  Like Varitek, Drew took off to the Northern League.  Two months later MLB amended their rules, so he would still be subjected to the draft.  The Cardinals made him their number one pick the next year and signed him for $8.3 million.

Due to this, the draft has become divided between those that can deal with Boras, and those that won’t.  This wouldn’t be so problematic if he didn’t represent many of the top players each year.  In 2004 he ‘advised Jered Weaver, who was considered the top pitching prospect in America, and Stephen Drew, its finest position player.  The Padres had the top pick and many experts had them taking one of these guys, but GM Kevin Towers wasn’t willing to play Borasball.

“I’m not going to touch Weaver or any of Scott Boras’ other clients.  I just can’t deal with the guy, not at this level anyways.”

Weaver ended up going 12^th to Angels, and Drew went 15^th to the Diamondbacks. 

The same thing happened this year with Rick Porcello, a top pitching prospect, and a consensus top-five talent.  Many questioned his signability due to the Boras factor, and as a result 15 other hurlers were selected ahead of him.  Porcello ended up going to one of Boras’ favorite teams, the Tigers, with the 27^th pick.

It’s no so much the shrewdness of this man, owners can respect that, it’s the fact he is running baseball from his office.  The MLB draft is a crapshoot at best, but shouldn’t teams such as the Devil Rays and Pirates be able to address their needs with the best available option?  At least in other sports when you are consistently bad you have hope in the form of the draft, and eventually you amass enough talent to become relevant again.  Boras has eliminated this from baseball by plucking all of the top talent each year and influencing where they go with his mere presence.  If it doesn’t happen, he’ll take them away and that team will be stuck with nothing, so why even try? 

Actually, that’s where the owners are wrong, well, at least some of them.  With the new BATNA- or Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement- teams are now granted a compensatory pick in the same position in the following year’s draft.  This is why three Boras Clients went in the top seven this year, if the Devil Rays wouldn’t have been able to agree to terms with David Price, the top pick in the draft, they would get the number 2 pick next year.  So, the BATNA gives them the comfort of knowing that they can replace him with equal value next year, or they could possibly draft him again considering he would be back in the pool.  Also, with a firm August 15^th deadline, players can’t drag out this process, and it puts the pressure on the agent to get a deal done.

In the case of Porcello the BATNA actually gave Boras more leverage since he slipped so far in the draft.  The deeper into the draft you get the value of the compensatory pick drops.  Porcello was a consensus top five pick, so if he doesn’t sign the Tigers wouldn’t get a comparable player.  So if the Tigers don’t pony up with what he is asking for, they lose out and Porcello just waits a year or two and get’s what he wants (that is if he is as good against 20 year-olds as he is versus 16 year-olds).  This is why he was able to demand the richest contract ever for a high school player signed out the draft, a $7.3 million heist.

In other words this man can not be stopped.  The Marlins tried to go over his head and failed, many teams have drafted his players and lost out.  Something needs to be done. No matter what happens he always finds a loophole and a way to exploit it.  The BATNA will only work if these clubs hold strong.  Each of his clients took negotiations to the last minute.  Everyone knows that he isn’t bluffing, they need to hold strong and show him the same to get the respect needed to survive.  Otherwise BATNA means nothing.   

Maybe if the owners wouldn’t have been trying to screw the players a figure like Boras wouldn’t have emerged, but with the way things were it was just a matter of time.  These things go in cycles, the owners took it to the extreme, but now it’s Boras.  He views himself as a Robin Hood-type-figure, but he’s turned into a robber baron just like the Rockefellers.  This man has plagued baseball for the last decade.  Get him out of baseball, or change the rules, because the system in place has been exploited.

His stature is only going to rise in the coming months when he again makes Alex Rodriguez the richest man in baseball.  His presence will loom over the World Series as everyone speculates over whether or not his top client will opt out of his contract during the ten day window following the event, and where he will go from there.  Boras will smile, as he always does, because he knows something that we all don’t.  All it takes is for one to say it’s fair, and the rest will follow.  All the owners have to do is hold strong, just one time, but that would never work, and Boras knows it.  They’re all too greedy, whether it be for money or wins, and a guy like Rodriguez is irresistible.  So again Boras will win, he always does.