The NFL offseason started just last week. It was fun and fast-paced. After less than two weeks, almost all of the big moves have already occurred. However, the MLB offseason was quite different, and there’s one man to blame.
WHO IS SCOTT BORAS:
While a couple of big moves did take place in December, such as the Juan Soto trade and the Shohei Ohtani signing, a handful of impactful free agents have made us wait until the very last moment. The top 4 remaining free agents entering spring training were pitchers Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery, third baseman Matt Chapman, and outfielder/first baseman Cody Bellinger. All four players have one thing in common: their agent is Scott Boras.
Scott Boras is known as the top agent in baseball. He negotiated many record-setting deals, such as Alex Rodriguez’s 252-million-dollar deal with the Texas Rangers and Gerrit Cole’s 324-million-dollar deal with the New York Yankees. The key to Baros’s success is his patient approach. Whether it’s due to losing a bidding war for a different free agent or a rival adding talent, teams eventually get desperate and give in to Boras’s high demands. Yet, this offseason didn’t go as well as the previous ones had for Scott Boras.
THE 2023-2024 OFFSEASON:
Scott Boras entered the 2023-2024 offseason expecting to make much money. His top-5 clients in the free agent class were outfielder JD Martinez, pitchers Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery, third baseman Matt Chapman, and outfielder/first baseman Cody Bellinger. Snell was coming off a Cy Young award-winning season, Montgomery was coming off a historical playoff run in which he carried the Rangers to their first title, and Bellinger and Martinez were both coming off of their best offensive campaigns since 2019. Therefore, Boras expected them to receive major pay raises. He sought the following contracts for each of these players:
Cody Bellinger: 12-years 264-million-dollars.
Blake Snell: 7-years 200-million-dollars.
Jordan Montgomery: 6-years 150-million-dollars.
Matt Chapman: 6-years 150-million-dollars.
JD Martinez: 2-years 40-million-dollars.
However, those numbers were far from the deals the players ended up signing. Almost all of the players were offered deals slightly below their asking prices. Boras rejected those deals before being forced to sign even cheaper contracts. It is hard to know exactly what numbers were put on the table if the deal never became official, but here’s what I’ve found:
Back in 2019, the Oakland Athletics offered Chapman a 10-year deal worth 150 million dollars. He rejected it and signed a bridge deal with the Toronto Blue Jays. Last year, in the final season of Chapman’s contract with Toronto, the Blue Jays offered him a 6-year 125-million-dollar contract extension. Chapman elected to decline the deal since Boras told him he could get more money in the free agent market. Chapman’s free-agent market was extremely dry, and on March 3rd, with spring training underway and the season rapidly approaching, Chapman and Boras caved. Chapman signed a 3-year 54-million-dollar deal with the San Francisco Giants. Chapman and Boras fumbled the bag. Over the next three years, Matt Chapman will make 8.5 million dollars less than he would’ve made had he taken Toronto’s offer. Over the following three years, he would’ve made 62.5 million dollars. Considering the fact that Chapman will be 33 years old after his current contract expires, I highly doubt he’ll get north of 15 million dollars per year on his next contract. Per my estimation, Boras cause Matt Chapman to miss out on approximately 26 million dollars.
Blake Snell won the NL Cy Young award in 2023, which was the final year of his contract. Usually, a Cy Young winner in the free agent market becomes the highest-paid pitcher. However, Snell was unlucky and fell into the same market as the two-way star Shohei Ohtani and Japanese phenom Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The expectation was that Yamamoto would get a big contract, and then, as the consultation prize, Snell would sign a slightly cheaper one. However, Yamamoto chose length over value and signed a 12-year deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers worth 27 million dollars per year. The issue now became that no team was going to give Snell more than 30 million dollars a year because he’s not as good as Yamamoto, yet they won’t give him a long deal either because he’s inconsistent and injury-prone. The New York Yankees threw Snell a lifeline, by offering him a 6-year 150-million dollar deal. Yet, Boras turned down the deal. On March 18th, with spring training underway and the season rapidly approaching, Snell and Boras caved. Snell signed a 2-year 62-million dollar deal with the San Francisco Giants. While over the next two years, Snell will make 12 million dollars more than if he had signed with the Yankees, the length of the contract will hurt him. 2022 and 2023 was the first time in his career that Snell’s era was under 4 in consecutive seasons. I highly doubt Snell’s contract year will be nearly as good the next time around. In addition, he will be 33 years old, and teams will prefer to invest in younger players. It’s hard to produce an exact number, but in 6 years, the decision to reject the Yankees’ offer will have cost Blake Snell millions of dollars.
Cody Bellinger had a major bounce-back season in 2023 and posted a new career-high .307 batting average while hitting more home runs than in any of the previous three seasons. With not many other quality outfielders in the free agent market, there was no reason to believe Bellinger wouldn’t break the bank. After posting a .683 team OPS against right-handed pitching in 2023, the New York Yankees were desperate for a left-handed hitting outfielder. They made it clear immediately that they were attracted to Bellinger’s career .850 OPS vs righties. Nevertheless, after brief negotiations with Scott Boras, the Yankees lost all interest and pivoted to the trade market. After acquiring both Alex Verdugo and Juan Soto it became evident that New York was desperate, but Boras was too outrageous. On February 25th, with spring training underway and the season rapidly approaching, Bellinger and Boras caved. Cody Bellinger signed a 3-year 80-million-dollar deal with the Chicago Cubs. The highest number Bellinger was offered is unknown, but it’s safe to say that Boras fumbled the bag. While Bellinger is making more per year than his asking price, the length of his contract will hurt him. The next time he’ll be a free agent he’ll be a 31-year-old outfielder. Teams will prefer to invest in younger guys than give a large amount of money to Bellinger. While Bellinger’s story isn’t as bad as Chapman’s or Snell’s, by the time he retires, the way Boras handled the negotiations with New York will cost Bellinger millions of dollars.
JD Martinez is already 36 years old and therefore, he wasn’t as desired of a free agent as Boras’s other top clients. Nonetheless, Martinez can still do a lot of damage with his bat. Any team would love to add the 33 homers, a .271 batting average, and a .893 OPS Martinez posted in 2023. Early on in the offseason, the San Francisco Giants offered the slugger a 1-year deal worth 14 million dollars, but Boras rejected the offer. Afterward, Martinez’s market went dry. As a seasoned veteran who already has a net worth of 128 million dollars, Martinez didn’t have the patience to wait around, and in December, he chose to sign a 1-year 10-million-dollar deal to stay with the Los Angeles Dodgers. It’s simple math, he rejected 14 million dollars and ended up with 10 million dollars.
After getting hot toward the end of his contract season, Jordan Montgomery went on an incredible run in the playoffs. Montgomery’s 2.90 ERA in 31 innings pitched in the playoffs earned the Texas Rangers their first-ever World Series Championship and earned Monty a couple of million dollars extra on his upcoming contract. However, Scott Boras expected a long contract, worth 25 million dollars per season. There are only 7 pitchers in the MLB whose salary is above 25 million dollars. While his postseason performance was incredible, one would have to be crazy to claim that Jordan Montgomery is a top-8 pitcher in the MLB. Jordan Montgomery has only cracked the top 10 in ERA once in his career. Unsurprisingly, as of March 19, with only a matter of days left before the season begins, Jordan Montgomery remains unemployed. What is Boras doing?! How one could make more money unemployed than employed is beyond me. Since pitchers who miss spring training tend to suffer the consequences the entire season, Monty won’t get a good deal at this point.
*Click the player names for their Baseball Reference pages
IS BORAS DONE?:
Scott Boras blames his struggles this offseason on MLB teams wanting to lower their payrolls. "Clubs have plenty of money to spend, but they're not spending in a matter that is customary to competitiveness. It's not that they don't have the ability to pay, but their choice (is) to regress on their payrolls." Boras told Today's Bob Nightengale. However, I believe that it’s because teams were tired of his nonsense and refused to let Boras drive up the market any higher.
This offseason will harm the remainder of Scott’s career. His clients won’t trust him as much, so they won’t let him wait as long, which will eliminate his strategy that made him a super-agent to begin with. Furthermore, teams have seen that Scott Boras is beatable and won’t give in nearly as easily. The downfall of Scott Boras isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Having a more fun and fast-paced offseason will bring more attention to baseball and will help grow the game. In addition, if Boras stops driving up the market, more teams will be in play for the star players and the league will become more balanced and competitive. The fact that in 2023 there were 3 100-win teams and 4 100-loss teams is a result of the free agent market being driven up too high for small market teams. With two of his biggest clients, Juan Soto and Pete Alonso scheduled to hit the free agent market next offseason, I can’t wait to see how things turn out.
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