Boras: 'Professional' relationship with all teams
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Boras: 'Professional' relationship with all teams
Matt Gelb, Inquirer Staff Writer
INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Last winter, Scott Boras accused the Phillies of backing away from an agreed-upon contract with Ryan Madson. This winter, the superagent represents Michael Bourn, one of the top outfielders on the market and certainly of interest to the Phillies.
Bourn is also a potential target of the Washington Nationals, a team with which Boras has brokered a great deal of recent business. He represents five clients on the Nationals' roster while only one, Domonic Brown, is with the Phillies.
When asked if any hard feelings between the Phillies and he could affect future negotiations, Boras touted his professionalism.
"I approach negotiations with all teams as I have a job to do for my clients," Boras said. "I don't bring emotion into it. My job is to find out what teams want to do and how they want to do it. I approach it as a lawyer for each client. I don't bring any circuitry regarding my personal feelings or anything into it. My job is to inform the client what is potentially available.
"I've been through 30 years of this and free agency is difficult. It's pressured. General managers will win and lose their jobs often in free agency. We've seen that. It's a difficult time for them, I understand. I don't make their decisions. But the one thing I am, I'm professional and available. Personal relationships to me are not as important as the professional relationships."
Of course, it's not the first time the Phillies and Boras disagreed. In 1997, Boras advised J.D. Drew not to accept a $3 million contract as the second overall draft pick. Business between the team and agent eventually continued.
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Who cares? Boras made a major miscalculation with Madsen. Cost him millions......
Bourn? Dude struck out a thousand times last year.— Manny Trillo- Who cares? Boras made a major miscalculation with Madsen. Cost him millions......Bourn? Dude struck out a thousand times last year. (HTML deleted)— Manny Trillo
- Boras' point is obvious: He represents guys like Bourn, Jacoby Ellsbury and countless others looking for a big payday, and knowing Philly is a big enough market to often have skin the game. He's not going to tell an Ellsbury: "Sorry, Jacoby, I know you'd like us to contact the Phillies but I'm still perturbed by those Madson talks in 2011. So I won't do it, even if you have millions riding on that phone call." Uh, no. If a guy like Ellsbury signs big here, he's happy, and Boras makes another excellent payday.
— eman - Everybody knows he's a horse's arse. And everybody deals with him.— PhillySubsMac
- No Boras clients.— Relocator
- Another gelbie non-story. Dude is straight up stealing money— spittooncj
- Scum. Bag.— richojr
- 1st and foremost, Boris represents his clients to the best of his ability. If any of you were high profile baseball players, a majority of you would want Boris on your side. Its his job to get the best possible deal for his clients. With that said, the Phillies need not overpay for talent not worth the asking price. J.D. Drew took many other teams beside the Phillies. Look what he did to the Dodgers. Boris and J.D. publically stated they wanted to remain in LA. Yet when his opt out clause came up, amazing, Boston was waiting in the wings with a 5-year deal. Oooooooooops...LA got the better of the deal...Drew never earned that $75 million from beantown. The Madsen debacle will never be know 100%. However, it seems to me that RAJ was not going to wait on a deal on the table for Boris to "shop it around" for something better. RAJ most likely make the offer, knowing if Boris/Madsen didn't take the offer ASAP, he would simply pounce of Papelbon instead of being left with nothing. Most likely, Boris told RAJ he would get back to him after consulting with his client and RAJ gave him a deadline. Once the deadline passed, Monty pulled the offer and gave RAJ the go-ahead to sign Papelbon. Boris couldn't find any other takers for Madsen for more money, came back to RAJ only to find the offer off the table. Some times you win, some times you loose.— drhoffman
- When you play with fire, sometimes you get warm and other times you get burned. Boris is all about the money he can get for the player at that moment in time, the fact that many of his players NEVER come close to earning what they are making doesn't bother him a bit and never will. It's a dirty business and he's a ground hog!— elbrewador
- A wise agent knows that his guys are well served if teams thrive by signing his clientele. Boras, not so much.— Claudio Vernight
- Excellent comment, Claudio. Boras is the ultimate take-the-money-and-run guy. I bet the Phillies aren't the only team that would rather chew glass than deal with him.
- bourn is not what the phillies need I for one hope they see this before its to late— abbyzuk
- Please no more Boras' clients. Virtually guaranteed to overpay.— 4thand10
- I am one of those old farts who thinks 9 out of 10 pro athletes are over paid. Look at the EAGLES, Asomugha a 3 year deal worth some 69 mil? Has he earned it? With the number of strikeouts has Ryan Howard earned his deal? We will get a better feel of that one (I hope) in 2013 with a hopefully healthy Ryan Howard. In this economy I can't afford to go to a ball game and this mediocre players pull in money, well I just think the majority of them regardless of the sport are waaaay overpaid! And then the leagues want me to pay $200. for a player jersey? No thank you!— DonnaRae
