Scott Boras Blames Owners For a Difficult Offseason

Following the Jordan Montgomery signing press conference, Scott Boras addressed the local media to explain his views on the lack of long term deals

The Diamondbacks held a press conference on Friday to announce the signing of Jordan Montgomery. The veteran left-handed pitcher is one of a group of star players represented by the Boras Corporation that ended up signing very late this season to shorter term deals than originally expected. In addition to Montgomery, that group included players such as Blake Snell, Matt Chapman, Cody Bellinger, and J.D. Martinez.

Montgomery signed a one year, $25 million, with a player option. There is also reportedly a vesting option, according reporting from Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic,. If Montgomery makes 10 starts in 2024 then he's guaranteed $20M for 2025. That can increase to $25M with more starts, but Montgomery can opt out.

This is far below the total guaranteed dollars and length of contract Montgomery was expected to receive at the start of the off season. Estimates from various industry resources ranged anywhere from five years, $100 million to six years, $150 million.

Recently the Giants signed Blake Snell for two years, $62 million, instead of the hefty nine figure guarantee he was seeking. Chapman signed with the Giants for three years, $54 million. Bellinger signed with the Cubs for three years, $80 million. One common theme among all these players is they have an opt out after year one. The other commonality is that the initial asking prices for all of these players were far higher than even then even the lofty expectations that market pundits had placed on these deals. That may be in large part due to the history of Boras clients often times receiving outlandishly large contracts in the past.

Standing in the hallway outside the interview room at Chase Field, Scott Boras addressed the local media to answer questions and offer his take on this offseason. He first cited the fact his agency did over $2 billion dollars worth of contracts during the 2021-22 off season, as opposed to just under $1 billion in 2023-24. Boras began by assigning the blame for the underperformance to the market and unwillingness of owners to compete.

"The ebbs and flows of owner spending in a CBA in a five year period, you know that there's going to be [large] fluctuations. There's been a dramatic difference in the competitiveness and aggressiveness of owners to win"

The reality in fact is that some of his star clients had flaws that made them less attractive to teams for the types of long term nine figure deals we have seen recently. Boras acknowledged that fact. "We had players that had an injury season or they had previous performances that were not at the level of this season."

Snell is coming off a Cy Young season, leading the league in ERA, but one in which he also led the league in walks. His 180 innings tied a career high set back in 2018. Between 2019-2022 he accumulated just 413 innings however. Bellinger had a dramatic drop-off in performance for three years straight following his 2019 MVP campaign. While his 2023 season represented a bounce back, the batted ball data did not suggest a return to his MVP form going forward. Chapman is still a Gold Glove caliber third baseman, but has batted just .226 over the last three seasons.

The exception to this ironically is Montgomery. He is coming off a career high in innings pitched, (189) and lowest ERA. (3.20). He pitched well in the playoffs after a trade deadline deal sent him to Texas and was key to the Rangers run to World Series victory over the D-backs. He's made over 30 starts in each of the last three seasons, accumulating 10 WAR in the process. Yet the 31 year old ended up taking just a one year deal as well.

Boras once again blamed owners however for the slow market for his players. "There was something where you just saw club's [baseball operations groups] calling and saying please wait, let me get my ownership engaged, just give me time to get my ownership engaged."

The "super agent" then pivoted to blaming the market being held up, and a freeze being put on contracts in excess of four years in length due to the free agency of Shoehei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamto, who signed 10 and 12 year deals respectively. "I signed [Jung Hoo] Lee for about $115 million with the Giants [six years], and Nola signed with Philadelphia to return to his old team. Other than those two signings we had a complete freeze on free agency on over four-year contracts because of Ohtani and Yamamoto."

There may be something to his claim that owners are trying to cut back on the number of contracts in excess of four years. Speaking just before Boras, Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick acknowledged that Montgomery was one of a group of four or five free agents that the team considered. But the ask at that time was for a longer term and higher dollars then they were willing to go. They ended up signing Eduardo Rodriguez to four years, $80 million.

"We're very cautious, we've learned our lesson, we've made a couple of long term commitments at the higher end that I think we'd have to honestly say didn't work as well as we hoped they would, and so we were a little cautious to move into , lets call it five plus years, almost no matter who it was."

Of course Kendrick is only speaking on behalf of the Diamondbacks, but based on market behavior it's reasonable to draw the conclusion that teams are pulling back from longer term deals for all but the elite of the elite in free agency. The days where an agent like Boras, or any agent, can spin a mid-upper tier free agent into a five year deal or longer may be over. Pushed to give a deeper answer on why this is case, Boras defaulted back to blaming ownerships however.

"Well when owners just say.......we don't have finality in what the media contracts are going to be but everybody agrees that they're going to be much better. But when you have unknowns they generally take steps where you just don't have many free agent markets where owners, that volume of them stay stagnant or actually reduce their payrolls, knowing that they're making record revenues in this market."

That all may be typical agent speak. In fact the implosion of Bally Sports has resulted in far less television revenue this year for the Diamondbacks, and likely other teams. The Diamondbacks had a contract that guaranteed them over $60-65 million dollars before Bally/Diamond Sports filed for Chapter 11 and terminated their deal with the Diamondbacks in mid July. Last year the league backstopped those revenues up to 80%. That safety net no longer exists.

This year the team has reportedly sold up to 20,000 Dbacks TV streaming packages , at $100 per package. That only amounts to about $2,000,000 million in revenue, before whatever expenses the team must pay out of that for production and administrative costs. Advertising should cover most if not all of production costs however.

Beyond that the team was only able to broker midnight deals on the eve of Opening Day to have the games carried on providers such as Cox, Direct TV, Comcast, and Fubo among others. While the details of those deals are not known, without any leverage, it's almost certain that the revenue from those deals will be only a fraction of the amount the team was originally receiving.

Other teams have also lost their television contracts and it is by no means a certainty that the future of television is as rosy as Boras depicts. In either case, the lesson that seems to be getting across is that with a few exceptions perhaps, teams are simply too smart to invest in extremely long term deals for players in their 30's that have their various flaws and imperfections.