Scott Boras

Scott Boras is an agent for professional baseball players. He has represented many of the highest-paid players in baseball.

Agent Scott Boras at an MLB Press Conference

Background

Boras is a former second baseman and center fielder who played in the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals organizations. After four years in the minor leagues, during which he never made it above Class AA, he had to retire due to three knee surgeries. The Cubs paid for him to attend law school at the University of the Pacific. He also holds a doctorate in industrial pharmacology, and during his law career he specialized in medical litigation.

Boras started his career as an agent by representing his former minor league teammates just as they were about to enter the major leagues. Boras's first multimillion-dollar contract, a five-year, $7.5 million deal with the Toronto Blue Jays, was for his former teammate Bill Caudill; Caudill had to retire three years into the deal, at the age of 31, due to arthritic shoulders.

Today, Boras runs the Scott Boras Corporation, where he employs former major leaguers as scouts in Asia and Latin America. He has continued to negotiate deals for many of Major League Baseball's high-profile players in recent years, including Barry Bonds, Bernie Williams, and Alex Rodriguez; as of 2005, Rodriguez's deal, for $252 million over 10 years, is still the most expensive contract in U.S. professional sports.

Signing bonuses and the amateur draft

Boras is credited with allowing players to have more control over their salary when they are first drafted in the amateur draft. Boras told one of his first clients, the 1983 draft's top pick Tim Belcher, to hold out for a larger signing bonus. The Minnesota Twins offered Belcher $100,000, the same amount as the previous year's top selection, Shawon Dunston, and not much higher than the 1965 draft's top choice, Rick Monday. Instead, Boras wanted Belcher to receive a bonus of $150,000. This essentially was what caused signing bonuses for amateur baseball players to escalate; high draft picks in the late 1990s and early 2000s routinely receive bonuses of several million dollars.

Several Boras clients were prominent in the 1996 draft. Boras found a loophole that granted free agency to four top first-round picks: Matt White, Travis Lee, John Patterson, and Bobby Seay. He was able to get White a $10.1 million deal from the Tampa Bay Devil Rays; White has never reached the major leagues, however. Seay, who signed with the Devil Rays for $3 million, was a reliever with the Tampa Bay for four seasons and is now with the Colorado Rockies. Lee, a star with Team USA in the 1996 Summer Olympics, has been a solid backup for several teams, while Patterson is now a middle-of-the-rotation starter for the Washington Nationals. [1]

J.D. Drew was another Boras client whose original team could not sign him. Boras's demand was an $11 million contract from the Philadelphia Phillies; the Phillies' offer was $3 million. Drew ended up having to hold out, playing the rest of the season in the independent Northern League. Drew re-entered the draft the following season and signed with the St. Louis Cardinals for $8 million.

J.D. Drew's brother, Stephen Drew, and Jered Weaver (the brother of pitcher Jeff Weaver) were two Boras clients drafted in 2004 who held out almost long enough to re-enter the draft in 2005. Both ended up signing without having to re-enter the draft, but neither could play professional baseball during the year that they were drafted due to their holdouts.

Controversy

A common controversy with Boras is that he often secures contracts for his clients that appear to be far above their market value. Understandably, this draws the ire of fans of small-market teams, because small-market teams often avoid trying to sign Boras clients due to their needs to keep their budgets low. In addition, many teams avoid drafting Boras clients because Boras tries to have his clients sign multimillion-dollar contracts before they even start playing in the minor leagues. For example, the New York Mets, despite not being a small-market team, refused to draft Rick Ankiel with the sixth pick in the 1997 draft; Ankiel was instead picked by the Cardinals with the 72nd choice. This is also the case with established major leaguers. Boras negotiated a seven-year, $87.5 million deal for New York Yankees center fielder Bernie Williams which he admitted was too expensive: "He was a 20-home-run center fielder, and we wanted 40-home-run money." [2]

Boras Client List

Several of Mr. Boras's clients performed well below the contract that Mr. Boras aggressively negotiated for them in 2005, a few others were injured in 2005 and barely played. One wonders if a Kinder, Gentler Boras will ever emerge when it comes to contract negotiations. Perhaps one of the most intriguing deals Mr. Boras worked out was between Kevin Millwood and Cleveland Indians General Manager Mark Shapiro in 2005. Mr. Boras agreed to several performance clauses that would reduce his client's salary if he missed playing time due to arm problems. This injury claus protected a small market team like the Indians from getting relative value to what they were paying for. Kevin Millwood would end up with the lowest E.R.A. in the A.L., a spectacular pitching addition to a surprising Cleveland Indians team that at one point gained 13.5 games on the first place White Sox during a two month stretch.

Now Mr. Boras wants a 4 or 5 year offer from the Indians for Mr. Millwood to remain an Indian and even took the step of calling out the Indians Owner by saying...."You know when people say a player needs to have a good year? In this case, the owner needs to have a good year." - Scott Boras, Agent for Kevin Millwood.

Should one "good year" automatically entitle a ballplayer to a 4 or 5 year "risk free" deal? It appears that Mr. Boras will continue to operate under that premise, and the "Controversy" swirling around Mr. Boras will most likely also continue.

In defense of Mr. Boras, the moment an agent doesn't try and get the best possible deal for his client, another agent can use that "niceness" as a wedge to call the nice agent "soft" and not looking out the for the best interests of the ballplayers he represents. This type of accusation and posturing by another agent can possibly result in stealing future business from the agent turned nice.

Every year, different baseball team's fans see their favorite ballplayer leave for greener contracts. Although a fresh fan base will emerge in support of the newly arrived and highly paid star, deep down, baseball loses a little bit of it's national past time soul everytime a hometown favorite leaves for a new team just because of a few more dollars.

List of Scott Boras clients

Rocco Baldelli Carlos Beltrán Adrián Beltré Barry Bonds Kevin Brown Bobby Brownlie Johnny Damon Darren Dreifort J.D. Drew Stephen Drew Prince Fielder Eric Gagné Tyler Greene Craig Hansen

Luke Hochevar Andruw Jones Jeff Larish Derek Lowe Greg Maddux Mark McCormick Kevin Millwood Xavier Nady Magglio Ordóñez Corey Patterson Eric Patterson Mark Pawelek Mike Pelfrey

Oliver Pérez Alex Rodriguez Iván Rodríguez Kenny Rogers Taylor Teagarden Mark Teixeira Jason Varitek Jarrod Washburn Jeff Weaver Jered Weaver Matt White Brad Wilkerson Bernie Williams External links BaseballLibrary.com: Scott Boras "Scott Boras, Motherhood, and Apple Pie" - feature on Slate Agent Scott Boras is changing the business of baseball - from U.S. News and World Report