Is Scott Boras screwing himself in the end?
For years, Scott Boras has been known as an agent who gets his clients the absolute best deal possible financially. His clients – Barry Zito, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, etc – have walked away from past contract negotiations with fat bank accounts and big smiles on their faces.
But in playing hardball yet again with another club (the Los Angeles Dodgers) in order to get Manny Ramirez a long-term deal, Boras could be screwing himself in the long run.
From ESPN.com’s Peter Gammons:
Scott Boras has put the heat on Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, and there has been no love lost. The L.A. scouting department has been told it will not draft Boras clients come June.
That may hold true for a number of teams. With the economy in its current state, the Yankees, Red Sox and perhaps two or three other teams may be willing to ignore the commissioner’s office’s attempts to fix draft prices. Boras and other agents may determine that high school players would be better off coming out in 2012 when the economy should be more stable.
Boras represents outfielder Donavan Tate, Baseball America’s top high school positional prospect, and could decide that Tate will be better served playing quarterback and baseball at North Carolina and allowing MLB and the NFL to set his price in 2012. Without the Dodgers and Tigers in the bidding, there may be very few teams other than the Yankees and Red Sox that may even contemplate Boras’ price on a high school player.
Boras has cashed in for years on clubs’ dimes, but in doing so it appears that he has alienated himself in the process. Teams like the Dodgers are finally fighting back against bully agents like Boras, who might lose clients soon if he doesn’t change his negotiating tactics. He relies on two or more teams being interested in his clients and then he wages a war between the two clubs, who are often more than willing to drive up the price so that even if they don’t eventually acquire said player, the team they’re fighting against will have to pay top dollar.
But in the recent case of Manny Ramirez, Boras has one team that’s officially interested (the Dodgers) and one team that might-kind-of-sort-of be interested (the Giants). And unless the Giants pony up and officially offer a long-term deal soon, the Dodgers will continue their refusal to budge on their one-year, $25 million offer. And worse yet, now the Dodgers are instructing their scouts that no Boras client will be drafted and apparently other clubs are doing the same.
Boras is losing the Manny-contract battle and soon yet, he might be losing more than that.
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Gotta disagree about Boras “screwing himself.” First, even if the Dodgers’ rumor were true, so what? Good agents are like good lawyers: they have to put their client’s interests first. Any player would want (as deserve) nothing less.
Second, even if the rumor were true, it likely is merely a negotiating tactic. And a bad one at that. When the other side in negotiations says, “After this deal is done, we’ll never again contract with anyone represented by you” you know they are morons. If they really meant it, they would walk away right now, not after the deal is done.
Finally, I’m mystified by all the whining by ball clubs and sports writers over how the players ought to be making sacrifices because of the Recession. Are the owners making sacrifices? Is Citigroup removing its name from the new Mets ballpark? Are the corporate CEOs giving up their fancy box seats? Hell no.
Borass is helping ruin baseball – ditto.
He sucks, though baseball is stupid as hell for not negotiating a pay scale for draft picks. It’s the smartest thing the NBA ever did, and the NFL is finally coming around. Baseball should do the same.
As for the Dodgers and Manny, we have known for years that Manny is an idiot, but he’s a great player that gives teams a cance to win. He’s also one of the few clean players of this generation.
We don’t know if anyone is clean now. And “Manny being Manny,” is also ruining baseball. Only a player who doesn’t hustle and only cares about hitting, because of the glory attached in these times, would laughingly be referred to as “Manny being Manny.” Just like many people’s acceptance of steroids, many people accept conceited, show off players that refuse to hustle and by the way he is laughing all the way to his limo with fans ticket money in his hands. Fans, even though we love it, (and me included) probably need to boycott baseball for a while to get things back into the proper prospective. It is a sad day for baseball when a player like Bonds can very nearly get thrown out on a ball hit to the outfield and nobody says anything, not the Manager, the Owner, or even the other players. I take that back, Jeff Kent hit him in the dugout, because he cared about hustle. But it is shocking to me that nobody else is upset by this conceited and haughty attitude. I guess players like Manny and Bonds makes millions and millions merely by showing up. As a fan, I pay to see players go for it every game. There are a lot of us who would kill for the chance to play baseball for a living, for a lot less money. There is just no excuse for that. Is it because they are making sub-par money? NO. It is because they are making too much money. There is some reason why all the great players, (Bonds and Ramirez call themselves “great”) have real baseball nicknames, Pete Rose called “Charlie Hustle,” Nolan Ryan, “Ryan Express,” DiMaggio, “Jolting Joe,” Billy Wagner,”Billy the Kid,” and so on. It’s part of the game, but players like Bonds and Ramirez to me are not really baseball. Look through history and see if this is not true, all the great ones have nicknames. It’s just my opinion, everybody is entitled to theirs as well.
Come on, please, somebody put baseball back together, it’s breaking my heart. I never thought I would see it, but Baseball is ruined, maybe not permanently, but for now. Until all the cheating stops and there is a way to track cheaters it has been irreparably damaged. My only hope is that maybe the Union’s power is broken because of all this.
At least my husband and I have seen defense come back because for the last few years and the fear of being found about steroid use, we think that many players have stopped. I hope it is true, I for one don’t want to pay sixty to one hundred dollars and drive three hours to a ballpark to see a false game. For that kind of money, we deserve as does everyone, to see a real game.