The Winter of Boras Is Upon Us
Hall of Fame second baseman Rogers Hornsby famously said, “People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” Hornsby’s playing career ended in 1937, long before cable TV and the Internet and the year-round news cycle for baseball came into being. Today’s baseball fans don’t have to sit and stare out the window and wait for spring. We can refresh Twitter and MLB Trade Rumors and watch MLB Network to get our baseball fix.
This offseason, fans of the Washington Nationals can celebrate their first-ever World Series victory for a few months, but everyone else will be thinking about next year. We wonder which of our top prospects will be ready in 2020. We want to know if our team will exercise the option on our first baseman’s contract. Who is likely to be traded and who can we expect in return? Perhaps most importantly, will our team be looking to sign any marquee free agents?
If you expect your team to be in the market for a free agent this winter, you should be prepared to hear the name Scott Boras. Many of baseball’s highest-paid players are clients of sports super-agent Boras, the ubiquitous founder, owner, and president of the Boras Corporation that represents roughly 175 baseball players.
Boras is notorious for pushing owners to the very limit. In 1997, he represented J.D. Drew, who was the second overall pick in the amateur draft by the Philadelphia Phillies. Drew refused to sign for the $2.6 million he was offered by the Phillies, instead playing with the St. Paul Saints in the independent Northern League. He went back into the draft in 1998, was drafted fifth overall by the St. Louis Cardinals, and signed for $7 million.
Boras has been very critical of the amateur draft in general and there’s speculation that he would like to see it abolished, which would make all amateur players free agents who could sign with the highest bidder. He’s also a shrewd negotiator when it comes to major league free agents. One of his most-famous clients was Alex Rodriguez, who signed two-record-shattering contracts and made almost $450 million in his career according to Baseball-Reference.com.
Sports Illustrated recently published the Reiter 50, which is Ben Reiter’s annual list of the top-50 free agents on the open market. At the top of the list are Boras’ clients Gerrit Cole, Anthony Rendon, and Stephen Strasburg, who recently exercised his opt-out clause to become a free agent. Strasburg had 4-years and $100 million left on his contract with the Nationals, but a Cy Young-caliber regular season and award-winning postseason will allow him to make considerably more in free agency. Of course, he could still re-sign with the Nationals if they’re willing to pay up.
(By the way, if you think you know where this year’s top MLB free agents will end up, play Off the Bench’s Free Agent Predictor game! To play, you guess the team each of the top free agent’s will sign with, the contract length they’ll get, and their total contract value. Each thing you get right earns you a point and after each month, the person with the most points wins an awesome OTBB t-shirt. Oh, and it’s totally free to play!)
As good as Strasburg was in 2019, he isn’t quite at the level of Gerrit Cole when it comes to free agent desirability. Not only is Cole two years younger, he also has a better health profile. Cole has averaged 205 innings per year over the last three years, with a 3.20 ERA, 3.14 FIP, and 11.7 K/9 (5.6 WAR per year, per FanGraphs). Strasburg has been about as good as Cole (3.15 ERA, 3.16 FIP, 10.7 K/9, 4.7 WAR per year), but has averaged just 171 innings per year. The difference is enough to slot Cole at the top of the list of free agent pitchers.
It shouldn’t go unmentioned that Cole distanced himself from the Houston Astros almost immediately after they lost Game 7 of the World Series. Asked by an Astros official about speaking to the media after the game, Cole initially said, “I’m not employed by the team,” then conceded, “I guess as a representative of myself…” and spoke with reporters. On his head was not a Houston Astros cap, but a cap representing the Boras Corporation.
Between Cole and Strasburg is Anthony Rendon, the premier position player available this year. Rendon’s play in the postseason may have surprised fans who didn’t realize how good he’s been the last few years, but die-hard fans already knew Rendon was an MVP-level talent. Over the last three years, he’s hit .310/.397/.556 while averaging 94 R, 28 HR, and 106 RBI per season. He averaged 6.6 WAR per season, which is the level of a superstar. He’s also a Gold Glove caliber fielder at third base, although he hasn’t been able to wrestle the award away from Nolan Arenado, who has won it repeatedly. Rendon was a runner-up to Arenado this year.
Five other Boras Corporation clients rank among the top 17 players on the Reiter 50, running the total up to eight. This group of five includes two left-handed starting pitchers, Hyun-Jin Ryu and Dallas Keuchel, and two position players, outfielder Nicholas Castellanos and third baseman Mike Moustakas (as well as J.D. Martinez, who has opted to stay in his contract with the Boston Red Sox).
Ryu seems like a perfect fit with his current team, the Los Angeles Dodgers. He accepted the Dodgers’ $17.9 million qualifying offer before this season and has enjoyed considerable success pitching at Dodger Stadium in his career. He’s been especially good at home recently. Over the last two seasons, he has a 1.64 ERA, 0.93 WHIP, and 27 percent strikeout rate at Dodger Stadium. He’s still good on the road, but not off-the-charts good (2.94 ERA, 1.12 WHIP, 21 percent strikeout rate over the last two seasons).
Keuchel was a free agent last offseason who went unsigned until early June because he had the millstone of a draft pick attached to him. After the 2018 season, the Astros extended a “qualifying offer” that Keuchel turned down, which meant any team that signed him before the June draft would have to give up a draft pick to the Astros as compensation. The Atlanta Braves waited until after the June draft before signing Keuchel to a one-year, $13-million contract. Without the draft pick attached, Keuchel should be able to get a multi-year deal this time around.
Castellanos had a terrific stretch-run with the Chicago Cubs (.321/.356/646, 154 wRC+ in 51 games) and became a fan-favorite at Wrigley Field. He’ll only be 28 next season, which makes him a more attractive free agent than the over-30 crowd, but he’s perennially below-average in the outfield. A Cubs outfield with Kyle Schwarber in left and Nick Castellanos in right is not what you want defensively. Last year, Castellanos ranked 78th and Schwarber ranked 85th in Outs Above Average among the 92 outfielders who qualified for the Statcast leaderboard.
Mike Moustakas has been looking for a multi-year free agent contract since before the 2018 season. Despite setting a Kansas City Royals franchise single-season record with 38 homers in 2017, he couldn’t find a deal after the season and eventually re-signed with the Royals a couple weeks after spring training began. In 2018, he hit 28 homers and drove in 95 runs while splitting the season between Kansas City and Milwaukee, but once again struggled to get a free agent deal before eventually re-signing with the Brewers. Now he’s heading into his age-31 season and still looking for a multi-year free agent contract.
Scott Boras has have three of the top five free agents and 7 of the top 16. Fans of teams looking to sign an impact player will likely grow weary of hearing the name ‘Scott Boras’ and it could be a long, grueling offseason as these players wait out the owners in search of the best deal they can get.
Ultimately, though, fans want their teams to win. We want to celebrate a World Series championship like the fans of the Washington Nationals have over the last week. What did the Nationals do last offseason? The headline was not re-signing Bryce Harper. He became a free agent and signed a mega deal with the Phillies. But the Nationals did sign free agents Patrick Corbin, Anibal Sanchez, Kurt Suzuki, Brian Dozier, and they traded for Yan Gomes. All five of these players contributed to their successful season in one way or another. Corbin alone was worth as much as Harper.
This is what fans should want from their teams. Get good players and win games. The money being spent is ownership’s money, not fan’s money, so if you’re an Angels fan or a Padres fan, you should hope your team signs Gerrit Cole, even if it takes a record-setting contract for a pitcher to do so. If you’re a Rangers fan, you should want to see Anthony Rendon manning the hot corner in Texas (he played college ball at Rice University in Houston).
Does your team need a catcher? Perhaps Yasmani Grandal is your guy. Looking for an outfielder? Marcell Ozuna, Yasiel Puig, and Brett Gardner are available. Interested in starting pitchers? There are plenty of nice options out there. My advice to fans: don’t worry about the money, that’s for the billionaire owners to worry about. Root for your team to get better by acquiring good players. In the meantime, consider entering the Off The Bench Free Agent Predictor Contest while we all wait to see how the Scott Boras-dominated offseason plays out.
