Is Scott Boras Losing His Touch?
It's starting to become clearer now a year later. Scott Boras, like the fictional King Midas, found everything he touched would turn to gold. MLB players under his umbrella have enjoyed contracts that hovered above market value for their services for several years now. Boras has always prospered from the tactic of putting one team against another because he always held the cards.
In 2023, the well ran dry, and suddenly Boras found there were no takers for his elite clients as Cody Bellinger, Blake Snell, Jordan Montgomery, and J.D. Martinez waited and waited for their big paydays. However, as the season was nearing closer, all these players signed late for teams that were not their first choices and for less than they had a right to expect. It was the first time anyone witnessed the promises of superagent Mr. Scott Dean Boras not fulfilled. Only two years removed from negotiating several large deals, it was as if MLB was tired of always losing to this lawyer who had begun to believe he would never fail to win a case in the court of free agency.
Boras, who was labeled by Forbes magazine as the Most Powerful Sports Agent in the World, made his mark with unlikely deals for fringe superstars followed by record-breaking ones for the best players in the league. Every new record reset the market for the rest and MLB. In 1983, Boras got Bill Caudill, closer for the Seattle Mariners, for $7.5 million. This was enough to convince Boras, who gambled on himself, to leave his law firm and, in the ensuing years, scored some of the most lucrative contracts in baseball history. One hundred million plus for Greg Maddux in 1998, $252 million for Alex Rodriguez in 2000, and now Shohei Ohtani's $700 million in followed by Juan Soto, with currently the biggest contract in MLB history, as he landed with the New York Mets for $765 million in 2024.
In 2023, it was clear MLB owners were making a concerted effort not to overbid Boras clients. He was still able to get Carlos Correa $200 million with the Minnesota Twins, but that was the only big score. Now, post 2024, he was able to get Blake Snell and Corbin Burnes Boras-sized contracts after the great Soto deal, but he has Tyler O'Neill and Cody Bellinger, who never got the breakthrough deals, along with Pete Alonso and Alex Bregman, still hanging by the vine. The lack of urgency by the Steve Cohen Mets after acquiring Soto and the New York Yankees’ newfound smarts combined with the Los Angeles Dodgers already overloaded payload has left Boras no one to bid against each other. He has even resorted to trying to bait MLB owners with his recent comments, "You're seeing so many teams that are actually not spending," Boras complained to USA Today a week ago, "They're making more, but they're not spending. They're spending less than they did two, three years ago."
There is still time for Bregman and Alonso, perhaps, to get a lot of money, but not long term. If you are not Juan Soto in his youth, teams are not going to gamble on long-term deals at those prices anymore. MLB owners have noticed the trend. It's not often that players live up to these types of contracts. Boras, by breaking the glass ceiling so often, has pushed his talent out of reach of teams who are shying away from setting a new higher market ceiling every year now as opposed to every 10. Is Boras losing his touch? Or has MLB just caught on to his game? Boras will still get the one big signing yearly going forward, but no more will Boras have the run of the board the way he once had. It takes two to play, and MLB's actions have placed Boras on notice that he may have to re-think his methods of getting future dance partners in the club called free agency.
