State of the Union: Don't blame Scott Boras for what's become of MLB free agency

It's about time for Boras to drive baseball fans up a wall for a couple months. But if MLB free agency is broken, he's not the one to blame.
Scott Boras is an awfully convenient stalking horse for Rob Manfred and MLB's owners
Scott Boras is an awfully convenient stalking horse for Rob Manfred and MLB's owners | Michael Castillo, FanSided

The leaves are falling off the trees. There's a brisk fall wind in the air. The postseason has only a few days (and one very important series) remaining. Can't you feel it? It's nearly time for baseball's preeminent, months-long carnival, a one-man media cycle that we are all powerless to stop: Prepare yourselves, because Scott Boras season is almost upon us.

Five days after the end of the World Series between the Toronto Blue Jays and Los Angeles Dodgers, MLB free agency will officially begin. And as he almost always does, Boras once again figures to loom large over the proceedings, representing name-brand stars like Cody Bellinger, Alex Bregman and Pete Alonso. Which means that fans everywhere are in for another thrilling round of thinly veiled leaks, protracted negotiations and weirdly pun-filled media appearances.

At this point, few things bring the entire baseball world together quite like disdain for MLB's preeminent super agent and Hot Stove boogeyman. Pick a problem that plagues the sport, and you'll find someone ready to blame Boras for it: He's the reason why salaries have ballooned toward the GDP of a small country; he's the reason why your favorite team got stuck with a contract that looked egregious the moment the ink was dry; he's the reason why stars leave their legacies behind, why the little guy can no longer compete, why good can never triumph over evil. Even the clients that Boras doesn't represent — like, for example, the top player on the market this winter, outfielder Kyle Tucker — come to somehow inhabit the world he's built, one fueled by greed and leverage.

Far be it from me to mount a defense of excessive wordplay, but lately the sound and fury surrounding Boras has all begun to feel like ... just a bit much. Fans are going to be fans: It's OK to be angry at a beloved player leaving town, and it's OK to roll your eyes at a man who is pathologically incapable of doing anything but spin when you stick a microphone in his face. I'm not about to argue that Boras is a model citizen, or that he's particularly fun at parties. But what I will argue, and what baseball fans need to hear, is that if you're angry with the state of MLB free agency, you're not actually mad at Boras. And it's time to stop holding him responsible for a sclerotic system he didn't create — and which would keep on spinning even if he disappeared tomorrow.

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MLB free agency is fundamentally broken

Fans aren't wrong to feel like something is amiss with the state of free agency. It's hardly the place you want to look for value, and some of the numbers we're seeing in recent years are downright eye-popping. Is this really the most efficient way for a team to allocate resources? What gives?

Well, no, of course it's not. But the reason why starts well before a player even hits the open market. Baseball is unique in its development structure, and in how it handles rookie contracts: Players are under team control for a full six years after breaking into the Majors, with annual salaries in the last three of those handled via a convoluted arbitration system. Add to that the fact that, unlike most other major sports, players often don't make their pro debuts until they're 23, 24 or 25, and you get a world in which most won't become free agents until around or after their 30th birthday.

That also just so happens to be the age at which we see a decline in an athlete's physical capabilities. So it's no wonder why paying them top dollar so often leads to regret: More often than not, we're paying them for the wrong half of their careers. Compare that to the NBA, in which the average debut age has now dipped below 20 and rookie contracts last for only four years. Aaron Judge didn't play a big-league game until he was 24, and didn't hit free agency until 30; this year's No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft, Cooper Flagg, will make his debut at 18 and hit free agency (or sign a lucrative rookie extension) at 22.

The NFL faces a similar problem, both because players need to be three years removed from high school to be draft-eligible and, more importantly, because football is a violent game with a notoriously short life expectancy. The league tries to mitigate that with a salary cap and contracts that aren't fully guaranteed, but even then, NFL free agency is minefield that most teams would be better off avoiding.

All of which is to say that, no, you're not crazy: Baseball's free agency really is borked. But it's not because of one mustache-twirling villain, or one snake in an owner's ear. Boras may be very, very good at what he does, but he's simply playing by the rules that have been laid out for him, rules that aren't really serving anyone anymore.

Scott Boras is a symptom, not the disease

Most teams probably aren't thrilled to throw nine figures at, say, a 29-year-old Prince Fielder. But what other choice is there, really? MLB's economic model strictly controls the money teams can spend on players in their early-to-mid 20s, meaning front offices need to choose between simply not spending at in the name of prudence or acquiring the best talent available. There is no real alternative: If you want to fill holes on your roster from one season to the next, you need to throw money at what's available, and the limits placed on supply — because it takes longer to reach free agency, fewer players get there, not to mention fewer good ones — mean that demand goes through the roof.

Into that powder keg steps Boras, who knows exactly which buttons to press to get teams to act as desperately at possible. It's not his fault that his clients only hit the market when it's time for their decline years, and it's not his fault that teams have a limited pool of players on which to splash their cash. It's a system designed to lavish riches on a select few and leave the rest out in the cold; Boras just happens to be a secondary beneficiary.

If he didn't exist, do you really think outcomes would be meaningfully different? Would the Yankees, Mets, Phillies and others be less anxious to make a run at Tucker this winter? Would Juan Soto have been less of an anomaly, not just a singularly talented but one with plenty of prime years still ahead of him at age 26? If you want to feel less queasy about the money your team spends in free agency, you need to take it up with Rob Manfred. He's the one who has pledged himself to making life as easy as possible for the cheapest owners in the sport, creating a system in which they can hang on to players at below-market rates far beyond any other league in the country.

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