So there’s a rumor going around now that Jose Reyes, the star shortstop for the Mets whose contract expires at the end of this year, is “listening to” wooing by Scott Boras as a client. Speculation is rampant that this has just raised his signing cost by $20 million dollars.
I have to say, that’s a heck of a reputation to have as an agent. Just the rumor of a player taking you on as an agent, and the perceived market price of that player goes up by $20 million? golf clap
Now, setting aside my strong personal feelings about what team Reyes ends up with for next year and how and when that becomes apparent (which can probably be guessed if you know that I’m a Mets season ticket holder), here’s a few factual questions for the Boras watchers on the SDMB:
Has there ever been a player who had Scott Boras as an agent who didn’t make it to free agency? I would think it’s pretty rare as that’s basically Boras’ publicly acknowledged fundamental bargaining position: get to the open market to allow for multiple bidders (whether they truly exist or not).
Further, has there ever been a player who had Boras as an agent who made it to free agency, and then re-signed with his current team?
Lastly - has there ever been a player who SWITCHED to Scott Boras in a free agency year, and then re-signed with his current team?
You can breathe easier, at least – Reyes said today there was no chance he was leaving his current agent.
From the Wikipedia entry, there are definitely cases where Boras’s clients re-signed with their original club and who didn’t go to free agency. Greg Maddux is one. I’m not sure if anyone went into free agency and then re-signed, but that’s not unusual; once you refuse to sign with your current club, I think there’s a rule keeping them from re-signing you until May.
Oh, and it looks like the bloom is off the rose for Boras; he is starting to lose clients who don’t like his “get the biggest bucks” philosophy (even to the extent of ignoring client’s wishes). He’s lost some high profile clients in the past year or two. See this article.
Last winter, Carlos Gonzales of the Rockies signed a seven year, $80M contract when he still had three years to go before he was a free agent. His agent is Scott Boras. It is the only one that I know of, and by all indications it was done against Boras’ wishes. The Rockies had just signed Troy Tulowitski to a long deal and CarGo wanted to keep the duo together.
P.S. Last night Carlos hit a ball right at me that fell into the Tiger’s bullpen about ten feet short of my front row seat in left-center.
I hate to break it to you, but if you’re a Mets fan, there’s really no possible way that Reyes re-signs with them. After getting thrown under the bus by Wilpon, that team isn’t going to be signing any big names for a few years (or until Wilpon gets out of Dodge). There’s also no reason for the Mets to not trade him for prospects right now.
Not at all. The Mets have several big contracts coming off the books next year (Perez, Beltran, and Castillo give them $36 million to play with). They could double Reyes’ salary and still have $18 million left over. Trading him for prospects will only piss off the fan base further. Their best move is to make a big, legitimate offer for Reyes. If he says no, the draft choices will be just as good as any prospects anyone’s going to give them – maybe better.
I’ll bet you $36 million the Mets do not have as high a payroll next season as they do this season, so that’s not a great baseline to use. Losing Beltran means you need a new guy in the middle of your lineup, too.
Anyway, if trading him for prospects now, when he’s playing at about half again the best level at which he’s ever played before, with his free agency pending and the team below .500 and just generally a clusterfuck would piss off the fan base, I think that’s more the fan base’s problem than the team’s at this point. You give him $100 million to stick around, and the good news is that you’ve held on to one of the faces of your most embarrassing team in franchise history. The good news! You can’t tear them to shreds for being terrible all this time and then be outraged when they blow it up and use their most valuable chips to get better.
Speaking of which, if they can’t trade a 28 year old shortstop with MVP offensive numbers for a better package than they’d get out of a couple of compensatory picks, either something is wrong with the process by which they’re shopping the guy, or they’ve suddenly dramatically improved the system of shooting fireworks at dartboards that they’ve been using to evaluate talent.
It is rare, but it does happen. Ultimately if the client wants to sign they will sign. Greg Maddux is the most famous example that I can of who resigned with Atlanta instead of testing free agency.
This is more common. Arod opted out of his contract and then returned. Boras wants to have multiple bidders, but there is no reason to penalize the home team.
That I can’t name you offhand, but I’m sure it is happened. Often a player wants to resign with a team, and simply uses Boras to up what the team will pay him.
As for what the Mets should do with Reyes well that is tricky. Usually a mediocre team should probably unload and rebuild, but the mets have some extenuating circumstances. I normally don’t think individual players have a huge impact on revenue (aside from the marginal value of wins), but New York is so vast and the team brand so shattered that I can see a complete blowup of the team including Reyes causing a mass drop in revenue.
The Mets strike me as a team that should go for a quick fix. Spending 50 million to get back into the playoffs might be worth hundreds of millions for the franchise. Don’t have to look past Philly to see what winning can do a previously mediocre franchise.
Unfortunately the Mets aren’t in a great position to make that run. They have some interesting outfielders in triple A, but no potential star. The pitching they desperately need is at least a couple years away. And of course you don’t get Reyes for 1 year, he will probably cost more like 6-120, which is huge risk on the back end. Although, as we have seen crosstown, you don’t have to be that good a ss to be an asset. And if you have a season like Reyes is having you are a legitimate mvp candidate.
If you keep him and can’t sign him you might get compensation, but you might not, as the new cba is almost certain to alter or remove the compensation rules. If you trade him then the team you deal him to would get that compensation if they couldn’t resign him, so you should be able to get the value of the possible compensation picks plus the value of two months of Reyes in a deal.
Ultimately I think I’d bite the bullet and resign him even at 6-120 and even if he is the only significant free agent I could afford. There just are so few even adequate shortstops in the big league. The drop between Reyes and the JJ Hardy’s of the world can be 5 or 6 wins, and I’m not sure how you could reallocate that money to do better. The Mets aren’t that far off being a good team and can get there with Alderson building the back half of the team rather than Minaya. Without Reyes it is a much longer road, and I don’t know how long Met fans will wait around for it.
Aside from offering 20% more than any other offer out there, the Mets are going to have an extremely hard time signing anyone good this off-season. The owner publicly insulted the three cornerstones of the organization - who is going to want to play for a team like that?
Jason Varitek comes to mind. Not that he could have gotten more money away from Boston, though.
Only if you decline arbitration.
Let’s not blame Boras for anything, folks. He just does what he’s hired to do - get every last possible penny for his clients, no matter what. That’s why they pick him as an agent. Baseball is a business for the players too, and let’s not get misty-eyed about loyalty and home towns and other stuff that doesn’t have a price attached.
But that’s OK with me. What’s not OK is when a guy goes for the money and then tries to pretend it was due to one of those ethereal things instead. Nobody gets fooled by that, only insulted. Like, for instance, when Roger Clemens left Boston claiming he wanted to be closer to his home in Texas, and then signed with Toronto.
I think professional players have a much thicker skin than you seem to give them credit for. Consider the Steinbrenner Yankees - throughout the 1980s and early 1990s he was at his worst, yet they still signed plenty of big name free agents.
I tried to avoid this becoming a “what will happen to Reyes” thread, BTW, because I don’t think it’s very fruitful, and I specifically wanted a factual answer on the history of past Boras clients. Besides which, Reyes himself has already emphatically denied any interest in changing agents - he’s been with his agent his whole career and he is the godfather to his children.
But since you’ve brought it up - there’s a lot of certainty from some corners that it’s a foregone conclusion, but I’m sure that that is the ONLY conclusion that’s 100% wrong. There is certainly a probability, even a high one, that he’ll end up elsewhere, but I would be shocked if the Mets didn’t make an offer and surprised if they didn’t actively negotiate before the free agency window.
Consider Mike Piazza in 1998. There were just as many writers and pundits who were “certain” that Piazza would test free agency. He was entering his prime just as Reyes is now, and after a superstar career built in “pitcher’s parks” like Dodger Stadium and Shea Stadium he’d surely be eager to take a fat contract to play for, say, the Rockies or the Orioles. Baltimore was the consensus destination for him: the 1996-97 O’s had been very strong and the core of the team was still there, and after a poor 1998 showing had the money to spend on a big bat. He’d be on a “perennial contender” playing before sold out crowds every night in one of the most beautiful and hitter-friendly parks in baseball, and in the AL he could extend his career by serving at the DH to rest himself from the strains of catching. “He would add at least 5, up to 10 HRs a season by playing in Baltimore versus Flushing”, I remember reading on ESPN. Meanwhile, the “Same Old Mets” finished 1998 with a then-historic (now familiar) choke job, blowing a one game playoff berth lead with 6 games to go by losing their last 5 games in a row to miss the playoffs by one game. So what did he have to come back for?
What happened? He didn’t reach free agency. He did re-sign with the Mets. And I think Reyes has FAR more reasons to re-sign with the Mets than Piazza did.
Actually, I’m taking my cues directly from the anonymous MLB player that wrote an article in the most recent ESPN the Magazine, talking about how undesirable the thought of signing with the Mets is.
Those are all the reasons the Mets should push hard to re-sign him. Alderson is a play-it-close kind of guy so the lack of daily updates on “I called his agent and we chit-chatted” doesn’t mean a lack of interest on either side. Or, it could mean exactly that, that they’re so far apart that he’s quietly shopping Reyes in a trade to be completed after the All-Star game. We just don’t know.
I will say that I spoke to someone fairly high up in the Mets front office (long story) and she commented in passing that they are definitely hearing the “re-sign Reyes” murmurs. Not just the guys printing t-shirts, waving signs and calling to sports talk radio or whatnot, they get around 3 calls or emails from season ticket holders every day mentioning Reyes. EVERY DAY.
So when you consider that Alderson has publicly said that the 2012 Mets payroll will be “around” $100 million, a little bit of math shows that with all the contracts coming off the books the Mets have around $30 million to play with… Sure giving one player more than half of that slack is not ideal, but neither is the prospect of losing yet another 20% or more of your ticket sales base due to not doing so. (Never mind the pure baseball reasons for keeping a nigh irreplaceable player where you have the means to do so, if you could just find the stomach.)
Obviously the Mets should field offers for Reyes, and if they get a great offer they likely have to take it. But if it’s some pu pu platter of second tier prospects (comparable to what they gave the Twins for Johan Santana, say), I’d much rather they just keep him.
I’ll point out that, as a fan, Jose Reyes is just a great player to get to watch – not just for all the obvious reasons (all around good player, exciting style of offense, been with the organization for his entire career), but because of his personality: all the time laughing and smiling, clearly invested in the games, always the first one out of the dugout to cheer for teammates, etc. An 80-win Mets team with Jose Reyes on it is probably as enjoyable to watch as a 90-win team without him.
I admit I find this article distinctly unconvincing.
Mr. Silva immediately presents as evidence the fact that Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira parted ways with Scott Boras. The problem with this as evidence Boras is somehow losing his mojo is that
It’s noteworthy they parted ways with Boras after Boras had gotten them both what would certainly be their biggest contracts, and
Silva does not provide any sort of indication as to how common it is for players and agents to part ways. For all we know this is totally unremarkable.
His only other evidence is an unattributed story about Kenny Rogers… which is followed by an admission Boras has been highly successful recently with a number of other clients.
So, really, where is the evidence Boras is bad for his clients? What we’ve got so far is:
Someone somewhere says he and Kenny Rogers didn’t see eye to eye.
He parted ways with Teixiera and A-Rod after they’d already hit the jackpot, which is like someone saying I must not like my mechanic because I always drive away after he fixes my car.
Big deal. Just this part offseason Boras was hired by Jayson Werth and Boras got $126 million out of the Nationals, a staggering sum for a player with Werth’s credentials and a contract that’s fixing to be the biggest giveaway since the Vernon Wells deal. I’d hire Boras in a New York minute.
Tell that to the actual MLB player who wrote the article. And if you don’t want to take an anonymous person’s word for it, ask Evan Longoria if he thought he got the most money he could have when he signed his contract with the Rays. Or Billy Butler if 4/30 was the most he could have gotten through 2015 if he didn’t sign with the Royals. For someone who can’t do an ounce of research in this forum, you sure do have a lot of absolutes you’re willing to spew.
This is, I think, the only reason Reyes will stay. It sounds like he’s very comfortable with the team (bus treads notwithstanding), and players will forgo a bit of cash to play for fans that really appreciate him. And the fact that he didn’t jump on the Scott Boras Cash Cow lends some credence to that.
Since neither Longoria nor Butler were free agents, perhaps that WAS the most they could have gotten. They did not have the option of auctioning thier services to another bidder.
Objectively, to me anyway, I think both Butler and Longoria got damned good money considering the only teams they were allowed to negotiate with were the ones they signed with. Both the Royals and Rays could have simply not negotiated at all and let the arbitration process run its course for ost of those contracts (Butler’s contract covered 3 years of arbitration-eligible years and 1 past them; Longoria’s deal goes two years into what would have been free agency and cut off 3 or 4 years of arbitration, I can’t remember which.) The sums they agreed upon strike me as being reasonble middle ground in terms of giving cost certainty to the Rays and Royals, but allowing Longoria and Butler to strike it rich earlier than they would have, and get guaranteed money that set them for life - a significant factor if you’re risk-averse and worried an injury could prematurely end your career.
It’s possible Butler and Longoria left money on the table… it’s also possible they’ll end up being way ahead. A broken ankle or a ripped tendon can happen at any time.