On Thursday, former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Julio Urias will have officially completed his domestic-violence suspension and will be removed from MLB's restricted list.
The lefty hasn't pitched in the Majors since 2023, when he was arrested after allegedly getting into a physical altercation with his wife outside an LAFC game at BMO Stadium — the second time he'd been accused of domestic violence, after a similar incident back in 2019. His contract with the Dodgers expired at the end of the '23 season, and after going unsigned for all of 2024, the league announced that Urias would be suspended for the first half of 2025.
Given his track record of disturbing behavior, not to mention his time away from the field, it's hard to imagine that any big-league team would be interested in signing him. But of course, no odds are ever too steep for Scott Boras, who just so happens to be Urias' agent.
“He still has every intention to continue his career,” Boras told the LA Times over the All-Star braek. “He’s getting in shape. Obviously, he’ll have options that are open to him.”
Per the Times' Bill Shaikin, Boras declined to elaborate on just what those options might be, but he made clear that a return to the Majors is the ultimate goal.
“It depends on how teams view the situation and view his skill,” Boras said.
This is, of course, a free country, and Urias has completed his legal obligations and served his suspension as determined by MLB officials. As such, he's free to pursue whatever line of work he chooses. But that doesn't mean that anyone's obligated to humor that line of work, and it definitely doesn't mean that baseball's premier super-agent needs to go stumping for him.
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Scott Boras is only sullying himself by trying to get Julio Urias back to the Majors
Boras has developed ... let's just say a checkered reputation over the years, having scored over a billion dollars for his various clients. For the most part, though, beyond all the bluster and the cringe-worthy wordplay at Winter Meetings, he's just doing his job, creating a market for players and steering them toward whatever will help them maximize their earning potential.
This, though, isn't that. In case you need a reminder, here's a brief rundown of Urias' off-field behavior since breaking into the Majors as a 19-year-old back in 2016. In 2019, he was arrested after witnesses told he police that he had pushed his wife to the ground outside a shopping mall in L.A. No charges were filed, but MLB still saw fit to suspend him for 20 games for violating its policy on domestic violence and sexual assault.
After serving that suspension, Urias blossomed into one of the best pitchers in baseball. He was on the mound for the final out of the Dodgers' World Series win in 2020, and he earned Cy Young votes in each of the next two seasons while pitching to a 2.57 ERA across 63 starts. Then, in 2023, came the second suspension: Video showed the pitcher pulling his wife's hair and shoving her against a fence outside BMO Stadium, then taking a swing at her as the two were being separated.
The L.A. attorney's office filed five misdesmeanor charges; Urias pled no contest to one, while the other four were dropped. But that is an extremely disturbing pattern, to say the absolute least. Maybe Urias has spent the last two years or so working on himself; he did complete a court-mandated domestic violence program. Then again, he went through a similar program after the 2019 incident, so he hasn't exactly earned the benefit of the doubt here.
Urias has gone through the legal system and is free to hold down a job and be a full member of society. But playing professional baseball, and being highly compensated to do so, is a privilege, one that athletes have to earn not only through their performance but through their behavior. Urias has failed that latter test profoundly, and it's upsetting that Boras, still the preeminent agent in the game and a figure in good standing all around the league, still feels comfortable representing him and trying to facilitate his return to the game. Maybe all the haters who have long lambasted Boras for caring only about money had it right all along.