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Profile: Baseball Agent Scott Boras
Certified Baseball Player Agent
Scott Boras
Certified MLB Sports Agent
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Education:
Pacific McGeorge, J.D., '82
Active MLB Contracts Negotiated: Over 50
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Services Provided:
Contract Negotiation
Endorsements |
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 retired 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 3000s
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.
JD 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.
JD 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 reenter 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 who 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."
The one problem with negotiating long term contracts at apparently
inflated wages is the larger probability that the client will not produce
equivalent to what they are being paid. Some contracts have hamstrung
teams for a few years when their contracted player gets repeatedly injured.
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 clause protected a small market team like the Indians from getting
value relative to what they were paying for. Kevin Millwood would end
up winning the American League E.R.A., a spectacular pitching addition
for the Cleveland Indians.
Another one of Boras' agents scored a huge contract on December 20,
2005. Johnny Damon decided to leave the Boston Red Sox and sign with
the New York Yankees. Boras negotiated a four-year-$52 million deal
for Damon.
His list of major baseball clients has included some very famous names:
