Is Scott Boras Working on Another End-Around?
(Photo: Cathy T)
Because of the nature of inactivity this offseason, we’ve explored, among other things, whether MLB teams have learned how to wait on free agents and how agents and players may need to adapt. These are trying times for a baseball scribe. We could use some transactions!
One agent who has tried to adapt, who is arguably the game’s greatest at his chosen profession, is Scott Boras.
In recent offseasons, when only a tepid market has developed for his clients, Boras has on occasion attempted to circumvent front offices — which are increasingly operating with less emotion and more reason — and appeal directly to owners. It worked with Prince Fielder in early 2012 in Detroit, for example.
Wrote FanGraphs alumnus Jonah Keri of that deal when it happened:
In short, Dave Dombrowski knows his stuff.
Which is exactly why Scott Boras wanted no part of him.
Mike Ilitch’s role in the nine-year, $214 million contract the Tigers gave to Prince Fielder has been well documented. … If you’re an agent representing a big-ticket client, do you negotiate with a GM who has 10 baseball ops guys at his disposal breaking down player projections to the smallest decimal point? Or do you approach the octogenarian owner who’s far more likely to make decisions from the heart, far more likely to say, “Eff it, I don’t care what happens in 2018, I want to win now”?
Boras perhaps didn’t pioneer this end-around approach in this age of data-drenched, free-agency-averse front offices. Rather, it might have been Dan Lozano, who appealed directly to Angels owner Arte Moreno while attempting to find a home for Albert Pujols.
The agent’s equivalent of the Lombardi Sweep, the play was called again last offseason when Matt Wieters signed with the Nationals on Feb. 21 after Wieters had waited all offseason, without any luck, for a market to develop.
It should be noted that the Fielder and Pujols deals worked out rather poorly from the club perspective, with Fielder producing just two seasons of two wins or better after signing his deal and Pujols quickly becoming one of the most untradable assets in baseball. The Wieters deal isn’t looking all that great for the club, either.
Boras is waiting for markets to develop for just about all his clients this offseason — and there are quite a few of those clients looking for work. I wrote about how one page out of the Boras playbook, the waiting game, might have decreasing relevance given the present state of affairs.
But he is perhaps going to another play, the end-around, with a view toward appealing directly to San Diego ownership.
Padres chairman Ron Fowler spoke candidly on the Mighty 1090 Morning Show in San Diego last week — an appearance picked up by the all-seeing, all-knowing MLB Trade Rumors — regarding the club’s pursuit of Eric Hosmer, a Boras client.
It seems Fowler is very involved in these negotiations. The Padres have reportedly offered Hosmer a seven-year deal, a claim that Fowler did not dispute. Fowler says he has talked a lot about Hosmer.
“We’ve had a lot of dialogue on it — [GM A.J. Preller, manager Andy Green and assistant GM Josh Stein] obviously lead the discussions as it relates to players,” said Fowler. “They talked to me probably six months or so ago when they looked at who the free agents would be for 2018. They like him. They like his makeup, they like his leadership in the clubhouse, and obviously, they like him as an athlete. We met with him, and he’s a very impressive individual.” ….
Asked about concerns of paying for too much of a player’s decline phase, Fowler indicated that Boras may have a hard time selling him on a lengthier deal.
“I think you’re taking my side of the discussions I’ve had with [Green, Preller and Stein],” Fowler replied. “They feel that this guy is so focused, he has all of the exercise stuff, all of the elements in place to take care of himself like few players have. He would be 28 in the first year, obviously, 34 would be his last year if it’s seven, but I can’t really get into it more than that. But I think we were pretty creative in the way we put a contract proposal together. We like it. I don’t know if Mr. Boras likes it, but that’s probably another story.”
While Fowler cites his own baseball operations leaders as the point men on the talks with Hosmer, he’s clearly had direct contact with the player and agent — perhaps an uncommon amount of direct contact, given his position.
Maybe this is nothing too out of the ordinary. Owners, of course, are ultimately the decision-makers. On the other hand, maybe Boras — the vast majority of his free-agent clients unsigned — now feels compelled to make an appeal directly to ownership, calling an end-around against the San Diego front office. After all, we know Dave Cameron is leading the analytics charge in San Diego, and he designated Hosmer as his No. 1 free-agent landmine of the winter. Very few analytically minded people would sign off on a seven-year deal for Hosmer.
The greater question might be: how long is this a viable tactic for an agent?
At some point, I suspect, front-office executives will advise their bosses (club owners) — or already have — about this page from the agent playbook and note how it worked out with Fielder, Pujols, and Wieters. But the play might still be working for now, and agents certainly would have a motivation to employ it with so many players still looking for work with less than a month before camps open.
With logic and reason winning out thus far this offseason, it might be time to appeal to emotion and the owner’s suite.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
Of course he is. But it’s not clear how many owners are around who are going to fall for it this time.
That said, I think Arrieta is gonna get his money from Ted Lerner, leaving him to battle it out with Tanner Roark for the coveted #4 spot in the rotation.
You don’t drop $100 mil on a pitcher and expect him to “battle it out”
I think I should have added more hashtags and winking smiley faces to better convey my sentiments.
Fyi, I down rate winking smiley faces. lol. No way you were going to win on that post.
Too bad. Looks like we may not be friends after all. 😉
What if the Boras end-around is to hold a substantial number of players out beyond the Rule 4 draft.
Holding out past spring training didn’t work out so great the last time it was tried, with Kendrys Morales and Stephen Drew.
I have no idea if it would be a good idea, baseball-wise. But couldn’t you see some coordinated stunt like this? Of course it would be at least somewhat *collusive*, but teams would be in NO position to cry foul over it.
Eh, it’s not really that effective as “collusive” behavior though. It’s not as if we expect the same team to sign all of Martinez, Hosmer, Arrieta, Moustakas, and Holland and thereby improve its 2018 outlook by the ~12 wins that Steamer projects for these five players combined.
It would, IMO, be something of a surprise if any single team signed even two of those players. So most of the likely suitors would move on and instead either sign less expensive options with lower 2018 projections (Lynn or Cobb instead of Arrieta, Frazier instead of Moustakas, Morrison or Duda instead of Hosmer, etc.), or perhaps have backups or young players who would get a shot to play.
What maguro said. It was in 2014 that both of those players went well past Opening Day to sign. Look at those two players’ 2014 seasons compared to the seasons immediately before and after, and it sure looks like they simply couldn’t hit worth anything close to their expected production after not getting reps in spring training.
With aging curves, the median expectation for all of these free agents is that they’ll perform better in 2018 than in the subsequent years of their careers. It’s very challenging math to think that these free agents maximize career earnings by waiting so long that they put their 2018 production at risk, especially if the reported offers for Martinez (5 / ~$125 million) and Hosmer (7 years, somewhere a bit south of $140 million) are correct.
Yeah, that damn near wrecked both of their careers. What’s worse than a pillow deal? How about a pillow deal for a totally unprepared player?
Hosmer’s youth and exit velocity give potential that he could be worth a seven year deal at $25 million a year. His results to this point clearly tell another story. I would be shocked if he gets that or better, but Boras has gotten contracts that reflect a player’s ceiling more than their projections as Travis pointed out with Fielder’s deal.
What’s interesting is we’ve seen Boras sign players to more balanced contracts before even when the market didn’t appear to demand it, like Strasburg’s extension. But maybe the Nats filled their Boras punch card to cash that one in.
For Strasburg, I think fear of him blowing out his elbow again was a big motivator for the extension.
Not sure exit velocity is going to help someone hitting near 60% of their balls in play on the ground. He’s a 1b, too, so probably not that fast.
Like him or not, Boras is always working.
I like him a great deal more than the owners and GMs who are pocketing fans’ money and giving little back in return.
“Very few analytically minded people would sign off on a seven-year deal for Hosmer.”
7 years for Hosmer isn’t the problem, 25 million per year is.
As GM of the Sunnydale Slayers, I would be happy offer Hosmer a 20 year deal with a $3 million AAV.
http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/unacceptable_btvs.gif
Given the shelf life of most slayers, it’s pretty remarkable Buffy managed to get past her arb years.
GRRR!!!!…ARGGHHHH!!!
Beginning of Season 6 is analogous to the first successful Tommy John surgery for a Slayer.
yeah, but the second UCL tear (the one at the end of season one was partial, though)
we could the take “Buffy the Baseball Slugger” thing pretty far…
No one is paying him 25 million per year. By the sounds of things his highest offer is around 7/130 million, the 140/147 million reports have been debunked tho Dennis lin said padres offer is closer to 140 million than 100 million
It’s precisely for that reason that Hosmer hasn’t yet signed.
The $25m is “the problem”.
The problem with Hosmer is that it’s very difficult to convince yourself that adding him makes you suddenly a championship-level team. He’s just not that much of a difference-maker on the field at a position where, ideally, you would like a stand-out bat. Everyone knows that, so Boras needs a customized approach for this particular player to convince people the whole Hosmer package is worth more than the sum of its parts. It’s more creative than JDM, because with JDM it’s a simple calculation of how much of his ceiling you think you can capture. With Hosmer, you can’t expect exceptional, and aren’t likely to get a stats-minded GM to agree to value him holistically
Here’s the thing, analytics go beyond the end result. While projections say it’s a bad idea to give hosmer 7/150 million there are other factors such as launch angle to suggest hosmer has another gear he has yet to reach with a adjustment
Travis wrote about this idea a few months ago. He was fairly skeptical about it, and my recollection is that the consensus from commenters was even more skeptical.
The problems with this idea are that you’re assuming both that he can do it and that he wants to do it. You’re also making a 9 figure bet on this idea. There’s also a non-zero chance that he tries to do it, but can’t do it well and therefore loses hitting value, and that it screws up his swing to the point that he can’t just go back to his old approach (not optimal, but still a career 111 wRC+) by flipping a switch. Not so much that he’s permanently broken after trying this idea, but that it takes him a year or several months to adjust back so there’s at least one year that he performs really poorly.
As a parallel, there’s a school of thought that Heyward kept constantly changing his swing and approach because of hitting coaches looking at a 6’5″, 240 pound player and seeing power upside that would take him beyond the 110 to 120 wRC+ that he was almost every year of his career to 2016, and that he finally tinkered too much to the point that he was a well below league average hitter. Not the whole story for his decline, but a major contributing factor.
Looking for the next “airball revolution” candidate is a great gamble for teams if they’re signing players like J.D. Martinez or Justin Turner to minor league contracts: lots of upside, limited downside. And those players also have an incentive to buy-in to the idea fully, because it’s clear that their prior approach was extremely unlikely to give them a long and lucrative career in the majors. Same story for the Logan Morrison’s of the world, who signed for 1 / $2.5 million plus incentives last year. The upside/downside tradeoff just isn’t the same for the team, however, on a player with a guaranteed 9-figure contract.
Boras isn’t waiting for “markets to develop” for guys like Hosmer or JD Martinez. The markets have already developed. For example, a functioning supply/demand market has developed for JD Martinez and the current market demand is something like 5yrs/$125MM from the Red Sox, if current reporting is believed.
Boras simply doesn’t like the market price being offered.
Markets are not set until a good or service is actually sold/purchased. Nice try.
Players must be aware of the impact waiting it out may have on their play given the history of those in the past (as outlined here).
Maybe it’s time for the players to do their own end around and leave the agents in the cold. Of course there are contracts; still, sign for one year… pay off the agent, and rework a lengthy deal.
Don’t forget Chris Davis.
Boras might want set up a new league with all the unsigned players
Or let them form two teams and get admitted to each league. Each player gets equity in team and the team is entitled to MLB revenue sharing which they distribute as salaries. All games are played on the road and they get 50% of attendance revenue in half the games where they bat last.
One teams name can be Unwanted Players, and the other Homeless Players. MLB will have to scramble to redo schedules though.
There were already rumblings of this approach from Boras in in early December with his Arrieta binder sent exclusively straight to owners. http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/21743107/scott-boras-taking-jake-arrieta-pitch-straight-mlb-owners-bypassing-front-offices
That move elicited these sorts of reactions from anonymous sources in front offices:
“A big league general manager, who also requested anonymity, questioned whether Boras’ approach is as effective as it once was with owners. He also said some of his peers aren’t fans of Boras’ strategy of going straight to ownership because ‘it presumes we don’t communicate with our owners.’ ”
“Another GM told ESPN that the approach generates ‘more of an eye roll at this point’ than a strong reaction in front offices.”
I thought that a key point of some of the prominent Boras examples, especially the ones mentioned here, isn’t just that the deals looked high by metrics of projected $ / WAR. It’s also that teams appeared to be bidding against themselves on signings such as Fielder and Wieters.
It’s one thing for a team to talk itself into “this is a final piece of the puzzle to get us a few more wins that we think really matter on the win curve over the next few seasons, and we need to outbid team x (who may be a direct competitor in the same division, or at least same league) to do it.” It’s dramatically different for a team to stretch to sign a free agent if it looks like said team is probably outbidding the second place bidder by 30% or more.
Even for Ilitch – who was 80+ years old, wanted to win a World Series while he was still alive, and was wealthy outside of baseball even by MLB owner standards (estimated net worth of ~$6 billion when he died in 2017) – you’d think that a good GM would have told him, “Mike, if you’re giving us that much payroll budget, I’m almost certain that I can sign Fielder for less and have $5 million per year to spend on some other upgrade.”
It looks like Dombrowski has taken a look at the likely potential other bidders for Martinez, and their likely respective payroll room, and said, “Fine, Scott. If you don’t like 5 / $125 million, then show me where else you’re going to find that contract. I’m not going to outbid my competitors’ by 30% on guaranteed dollars.” And while that would be a somewhat weak market for Martinez compared to a lot of thoughtful predictions (disregard Boras’ $200 million opening number), it’s still above the median crowdsourced 5 / $110 prediction here and basically saying that Martinez won’t get the 6th year predicted by Dave Cameron (6 / $156) or MLB Trade Rumors (6 / $150).
I hope the Red Sox don’t bid against themselves,and go beyond 5/$125. But they need Martinez almost as much as he needs them. I don’t think they have another way of injecting some power into their offense.
Whatever shenanigans Boras may try to pull with the Padres in the Hosmer negotiations, I’m confident Dave won’t blink an eyelid.
He will probably be too busy trading for that ‘really good value’ contract from the Cubs.
https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-fascinating-jason-heyward-contract/
Personally, it strikes me as a very bad idea to “advise” your owner/boss that “you’re naïve enough to get hustled by Boras but I’m not, so leave things to me”. I wouldn’t do it, and I’m pretty darn good at ticking off bosses.
I don’t think that’s much at all how that conversation goes.
It’s pretty conventional wisdom that any side in a negotiation ought to have a single designated point of contact and not let the other side try to feel things out by alternately negotiating with multiple people to see who is most likely to cave or get a better idea of what’s posturing and what’s a true walk-away point.
So, in this example, all discussions with an agent on contract terms would be through the GM, or have the GM and owner both on the phone (or in the room). A meeting with Hosmer – which I assume would also have Boras present, or at least someone else from his firm, as I can’t imagine that any agent advises a free agent player to meet with a team owner/GM by himself – would logically have the owner, the GM, Hosmer, and an agent. And I’d be willing to bet that it would be agreed beforehand between GM and agent that this meeting is only a get to you know meeting about “soft issues” like franchise vision and the player’s goals, not a discussion of contract terms.
The other aspect of this would be that, if an owner is involved at a level of detail beyond just setting a payroll budget, the internal discussions at the team would logically cover topics like the baseball people explaining (at least in summary terms) why they want to sign a certain player and also what their alternate plans are with that money if they don’t sign a certain free agent. I suppose that business considerations can get into the mix if an owner or business executives take the view that a certain player is somehow special in how “marketable” he is. I’m sure that some owners aren’t great bosses because they micro-manage, but the general view ought to be “I’ve hired these baseball people and will trust their baseball judgement, and if I don’t then I should fire them and get new baseball people.”
Owners have huge, HUGE! egos, Dave. And often an overwhelming urge to play with their great new toy.
hey….me too. I’ve been listing that under “skills” on my resume….so far, hasn’t helped much.
🙂 Reminds me of that early early Simpsons episode where in response to the oh-so-fun “what’s your biggest weakness?” question Job Applicant #1 answers “I just work too hard!”, Applicant #2 joins in with “Me too, I never know when to stop!”, then Applicant Homer replies “Well I’m lazy, I don’t learn well, people complain about my personal hygiene, things start disappearing from the workplace, … “
Any owner who likes going on TV/radio to pontificate about player transactions is a heckuva patsy candidate for Boras. Hosmer is now a Padre, just a matter of seeing how many $$$ Boras hustles out of them.
If we read the last paragraph of that quote from Ron Fowler, though, it’s saying that the owner’s side of the internal discussion has been for him to want the Padres’ baseball people to convince him why signing Hosmer for 7 years is a good idea.
These sorts of interviews can, of course, always involve some public posturing meant to be heard both by Boras/Hosmer and by fans. (On the latter: “we tried to sign Hosmer, and stretched on our offer to do so, but it just didn’t come together. So don’t fault ownership too much for not increasing payroll as much as fans would like.”)
The indicated dynamic, however, is about 180 degrees from the Fielder or Wieters situations where the hypothesis is that the respective owners told the front office, “just get the deal done.”
Not necessarily true. The FO might prefer to sign him to a 8-10 year deal for a further-reduced AAV while Fowler wants to draw the line at 7 years, say 9 and 153 versus 7 and 133.
Even if that’s the case on specifics, I’ll stand by my general point that it doesn’t fit with Travis’ thesis for why Boras should talk directly to owners.
The stated dynamic, if we take Fowler’s words at face value, is that the front office is already talking the owner up on why the team should offer “more”, whether that’s AAV or years.
Then, why would Boras try to communicate with Fowler if he’s the limiting factor, not the front office? If one was to take your extrapolation from his words as fact, Fowler would be the one interjecting himself into the negotiation.
It’s more than possible that Boras got Fowler on board with Hosmer and the FO is now trying to sell on him a longer-term, shorter AAV structure. Maybe Preller directly hired Dave Cameron just to prepare a fancy, PowerPoint presentation for Fowler about Hosmer. Assumptions can be easily made one way or another — that’s why I wouldn’t read too much into his words.
Also, I think it can be easily implied that Travis is referring to instances when Boras goes to the owner because he doesn’t like what the FO has to say or he knows the FO won’t overvalue his guy.
Your first sentence is my point: I don’t see any evidence from that quote that Fowler meeting with Hosmer is something that was driven by Boras pushing for it.
You are making a huge assumption, which contradicts Fowler’s direct quote, that he’s the one selling the FO on this idea.
As for why Fowler’s involved to some degree:
– Because he, as the owner of the team, wants to at least meet the person who will be the team’s highest-paid employee before the team contractually commits a 9 figure sum to this player, perhaps especially if “make-up”, “character”, and “clubhouse culture” are part of how Preller is rationalizing stretching on this contract.
– Because it’s far from unusual for owners to have final approval on nine figure contracts that will be the team’s largest contractual commitment.
I’m not making any assumptions, I’m just saying we really have no idea how the Fowler-Boras relationship played out and that it’s hard to strongly infer anything about the dynamic of agent-owner negotiations from this particular example.
And final approval and a few, get-to-know-you meetings is different than involvement in actual negotiations, which seems to be happening here.
My general point is that there’s little downside for Boras in directly dealing with owners. It’s his reputation and client list that even allows him to access those owners; I can’t imagine a lesser-known agent having the gravitas to consistently blow past the FO to reach ownership.
Boras is always working another end around. Analytics are his enemy and emotion is his friend. Specifically fear is his tool. Fear of fan outrage, fear of getting fired, fear of being irrelevant, and in the case of an elderly owner- fear of passing away without realizing a dream. Most GMs enter free agency with a solid analysis of where they should go and not beyond. Scott and his binder attempts to create internal pressure to move that line by going through, around, over, or under to create that pressure. He then hopes to enter the negotiation and smell the fear. I’m sure more than a few GMs are happy to know that odor may be coming from Scott this year. He’s good at what he does but the effective hard cap has changed the rules.
The stone cold hot Stove season is not just about resetting the luxury tax for many teams; It is also also about bringing the leverage away from Baseball mercenaries and /or possible slave trades like Boras. Owners and common sense will win. A reset is required… An owner better look down the road, when real fans will not be able to afford the tickets- parking- consesions at their local ball park. Smart guys see the dark tunnel ahead. Just say No… to drugs and 5/6 contracts to aging ball ballplayers.
More likely, is the loss of revenue when the cable bubble bursts. Rights fees are bankrupting ESPN, and at some point, the networks will reduce the fees they pay to MLB. But the owners are already prepared—they have MLBAM and their own TV network to protect against this.
Can we call this the Boras Reach-Around instead?
In the past I wondered on occasion if Boras had some kind of analytics advantage that teams and other agents didn’t have the same access to. Think 1998-2010 when every winter Boras clients were getting awarded contracts well beyond market expectancy and the players counterparts with different representation were not receiving the same financial love.
I remember back in the late 90’s early 2000’s there was all kinds of write ups in publications like si/espn about Boras corp and how it’s full of not just lawyers and reps but also statisticians and people who exclusively watch game tape all day and dissect plays. I imagine there was a time when Boras could use otherwise unknown stats along with regular old counting stats to sell his clients and now these front offices have caught up if not surpassed him and are now smart enough not to get trapped into long term agreements with Boras’s underwhelming crop of free agents this year.
Anyone know of any particular stats that may have originated at Boras corp?
For-profit businesses keep any such things totally proprietary.
Yes you’re right, you made the most obvious statement, the rest of us know that on occasion leaks have happened in for profit business, also it wouldn’t be the first time that 2 people/orgs have come up with the same idea or maybe since Boras would be using such stats to sell his client he would have to explain it and i’m sure they could extrapolate from there.
The sports media has written quite a few words this offseason on why the free agent market has been shutdown. I agree that there are multiple reasons, but I remain convinced that the biggest reason is Boras. He controls a number of the big names and he is purposely holding them back, which freezes the rest of the market. Will his strategy work? I wouldn’t bet against him.
You may have something there, but as the cost of franchises has gone up, the number of single owners susceptible to the Boras Reach-Around (BRA) has gone down.
For the Padres, Ron Fowler represented a minority of owners who collectively bought 49% of the team, and left it to Jeff Moorad to find a group to buy controlling interest. When Moorad was turned down by the other owners, the O’Malley/Seidler group bought controlling interest.
The Managing General Partner repesenting the controlling interest is Peter Seidler, nephew of Peter O’Malley and son of Peter O’Malley’s sister Theresa, both co-owners of the Dodgers when Walter O’Malley died. They both own a piece of the Padres now, and their sons are actually running the club, not Ron Fowler.
Bottom line, appealing to the O’Malley/Seidler group is a whole different story.
I agree with your point. However, I think the sheer number of both Boras clients and other unsigned players could ultimately work against him. It’s supply and demand: finding homes for all these guys is going to be very difficult.
Am I the only one who thinks Boras is a little full of himself?
Dave Cameron’s first job as San Diego Padre analyst: stop the Hosmer signing.
Great young saber depts are valuing talent today.
The days of agents taking teams to the cleaners are over.
this.
Boras needs to develop his play book.
Travis…nice try on the Lozano/Moreno thinking.
Boras did, in fact, pioneer going straight to ownership many times before Pujols went to the Halos.
The one that stands out most is A-Rod to the Rangers over a decade earlier when Boras went right to Tom Hicks in the 2000 off-season. Doug Melvin was certainly involved but Boras negotiated many times with Hicks before the signing.
Boras should run the MLBPA.
Boras keeps saying that he won’t let his clients sign for anything under their market value. Does he not understand the meaning of market value?
Weather he lets them or not, the players will choose to sign soon rather than being unemployed.