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Sunday, January 20, 2013

Scott Boras: A Brief Review (Guest Post on Payoff Pitch Blog)


                Baseball, like all sports, is a game of winners and losers.  Individuals compete to see who is the best at performing particular tasks while utilizing their unique skill sets.  In baseball, one of the individuals who has changed this game the most has never set foot on a field as a MLB player, never worked with any organization, and didn’t work to invent any rules, make any equipment, or provide anything to change the game itself.  Instead, this individual worked with players and against MLB teams to forever change the baseball landscape.
 
                Scott Boras played in minor league baseball in the Cardinals and Cubs organizations.  While injuries cut his playing career short, Boras’ work in baseball had not yet really even begun.  After attending University of the Pacific to attain his Doctor of Pharmacy degree and eventually his law degree, Boras worked shortly for a pharmaceutical defense department of a Chicago law firm.  However, this was not the work that Boras was meant to perform.  Former players Mike Fischlin and Bill Caudill, both former teammates of Boras, hired the young lawyer as their agent which eventually landed Caudill a landmark $7.5 million contract.  At this point, Boras decided to move on from his other endeavors and pursue player representation full time.
 
                If there were a timeline marking the most significant events in the history of sports, the founding of the Boras Corporation would be one of the items bolded on the list.  To put it simply, Scott Boras founded what would become the greatest sports agency of all time.  What makes it the best agency of all time?  Let’s look at a list of some of the accomplishments achieved by Boras and his employees:
 
1988: Andy Benes signs for a $235,000 bonus as the first overall pick in the draft, the largest bonus given to a player in history at the time.
1989: Ben McDonald signs the first multi-year MLB contract ever given to a baseball only amateur.  His bonus was $350,000.
1990: Todd Van Poppel, the 14th overall pick, signs for $1.2 million with a $500,000 signing bonus, which is considered one of the most shocking and astonishing contract signings ever.
1992: Greg Maddux signs for 5 years and $28 million dollars, by far the largest contract in baseball history at the time.
1996: Jerry Reinsdorf (very close to commissioner Bud Selig) is “outsmarted” by Boras as the agent finds a loophole in the rules, allowing Bobby Seay to receive a $3 million signing bonus.  Maneuvers in this draft by Boras led to $25 million dollars extra for his clients and changing of MLB rules.
1997: The “Amateur Draft” is changed to “The First Year Player Draft” as Boras again finds loopholes in the rules to allow J.D. Drew to reject the Phillies’ offer, play independent baseball, and then sign for triple the amount the following year with the St. Louis Cardinals.
1997: Boras becomes the first agent to have a player break the $50 million barrier by signing Greg Maddux to a new deal with the Atlanta Braves.
1998: Boras gets a $87.5 million contract from the Yankees even after the club made public statements that they would not go above $60 million
2000: “The Contract that Changed Everything” is signed.  Alex Rodriguez signed a 10 year, $252 million contract with the Texas Rangers, which not only doubled the existing largest contract in sports, but was even more money than then-owner Tom Hicks had paid to buy the Rangers themselves.
2001: Andruw Jones receives $8.2 million in his 2nd year of salary arbitration.  This would stand as the largest salary arbitration win for any player until 2008.
2002: Again, Greg Maddux breaks a record, signing the largest one-year contract in baseball history ($14.75 million)
2004: Boras’ presence forces the Padres to pass on consensus top talents Stephen Drew and Jered Weaver because of financial concerns.  Instead they took Matt Bush, who never played above class A.  This would eventually lead to the change of using a shorter window to sign draft picks.
2006: Barry Zito signs record-breaking 7 year, $126 million contract with the Giants.
2007: Alex Rodriguez opts out of his initial contract and signs a deal with the potential to be worth $305 million dollars over 10 years after incentives.
2009: Boras signs Stephen Strasburg to the largest contract in draft history, worth $15.1 million.
2012: Prince Fielder surprises the entire baseball industry by signing a 9 year, $214 million contract with the Detroit Tigers.  The contract is considered one of Boras’ crowning achievements as many believed the market for Fielder to be thin at best.
 
                A good question to ask at this point would be simple: how?  How in the world is it possible for one agent so sign so many record-breaking contracts on so many different levels?  Well, part of it is that Scott Boras is one of the smartest individuals to ever appear in the world of baseball.  Boras stated it quite simply not terribly long ago:
 
“The economics of the game have never been better, which proves that investment in players, star players, is the way to go.  The fact is if an owner wants to win there are premium players out there.  And we know the revenues are there for them to pursue them.”
 
                A more direct way to say it would be: “I have what they want, so we do things on my terms.”  Since Boras has had such a massive stranglehold on top talent over the years, what alternatives are there for teams?  It’s not like you can say no to Boras, because eventually teams are going to give in to the desire to have talent and make money.  However, it may come across to some as odd, because not all of the above contracts were worth what they became.  This really reveals Boras’ go-to strategy: an incredible ability to oversell his players.  The best example of this comes in the 73-page binder that Boras developed for Prince Fielder heading into the 2011-2012 off season.  The book celebrated Prince Fielder’s achievements in the history of the game, which begs everyone to ask exactly what Fielder had achieved.  If you read between the lines, it really wasn’t a whole lot.  Don’t tell that to Scott Boras, because he eventually found a way to convince Tigers ownership that signing Fielder to $214 million was a worthwhile investment. 
 
                Now, not all of this is strictly because of Boras.  Boras just happened to be the most dominant agent during the largest period of growth for sports in American history.  With booming TV contracts, league expansion, and at some points a booming American economy, Boras and his clients walked into a gold mine.  But no, really, this was all about Scott Boras.  When you sign more than 15 record-breaking contracts, are the primary factor in three different significant rule changes, and completely change the entire landscape of player representation, you are going to go down as one of the most significant individuals in the history of sports.  Just forget baseball for a second and chew on this: Scott Boras might be one of the 10 most important non-players in the history of professional sports.  Perhaps the best way to present what Scott Boras has been to baseball?  Take a recent quote from Boras himself on the fact that his top-tier free agents are not yet signed:
 
                “People call me all the time and say, ‘Man, your players aren’t signed yet.’ Well, it doesn’t really matter what time dinner is when you’re the steak.” 
 
P.S.- Rafael Soriano, who many thought wouldn’t see a large contract because Boras waited so long to sign him, agreed to a multi-year deal with the Washington Nationals for $14 million dollars a season.  So really, the point here is that if Scott Boras represents a player, expect to pay up.

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