Caring about teams and their issues is an important part of negotiating with them to get the best results for his clients. He has failed to do that for Bregman and will lose clients over it, as he should. A baseball contract is an agreement between two parties (a player and a team) the best interests of both must be considered in any such agreement. By ignoring the concerns of one he fails to serve the other.
He better start taking teams and their issues into consideration if he wants to get the best contract for his client. Boras is a hack, he only gets big contracts for his big name stars and his other clients gets the short end of the stick. At this stage, he relies on his clients' star power and name more than anything else to get those big deals.
On the flip side, teams would happily take advantage of players if there weren’t agents… far-more-so than agents currently take advantage of teams. The system benefits both sides when it’s convenient.
Owners take advantage of players continuously. By playing them at below market costs before they get tenure but then using their age as an excuse to not pay them once they get enough service time to actually control their career. Bregman has 39.7 fWAR so far in his career which has $317.3M value according to Fangraphs. He has made just under $108M in his career, so his team has collected $209M in excess value but refuse to offer him 1 extra year or $30M to keep him in an Astro uniform.
ONLY as it relates to getting the best contract for his client. Caring about any team and what their philosophies or plans are is entirely secondary.
Who are they bidding against? why should they give an extra year or more money till it’s confirmed that somebody else is actually doing so?
They are not bidding against anyone because they have created the system to prevent any competition until after they have wrung every bit if value they can from a player's first 6-7 prime seasons.
This in bold is a fallacy. If the team control per the CBA wasn’t in place, there would be far less $ for free agents. The players collectively bargained the system, they were not taken advantage of. There’s no logic to think teams owe free agents anything any moreso than to think free agents owe their former teams anything. I say all that as someone who is very pro union/worker.
The young, good team controlled players are taken advantage of. The owners and the veterans benefit. And it was veterans who negotiated the system that benefits them and the expense of the young kids.
Yes the system is collectively bargained but: What representation did the amateurs and minor leaguers have when choosing what terms they have to work under? And the system did not start from a neutral point. Owners had 100% of the rules in their favor, and some of them have been adjusted to be more player friendly over the years as new CBAs have been agreed to in exchange for the players agreeing to things that benefit the owners. But they have never been equal fairness between the owners and players.
I for one wouldn't mind seeing the luxury tax extended for teams resigning their own players on multi year deals. Give some sort of incentive for the players to stay with the same organization instead of signing elsewhere (more so than just a draft selection or two).
I too would be on board with that. Something similar (but not as restrictive) as the franchise player designation in NFL. Or maybe just when you sign your own player only the 1st $100M counts toward the CBT.
This is an objective that I have mentioned multiple times. It sucks seeing guys like Bregman leave when they want to stay, but also want to make $$$. I don't like the franchise tag, because it takes away the freedom to choose by the player. I would like the player to choose, but given more incentive to stay. Like the NBA idea allowing larger deals from original team before it was just perverted into sign and trade deals. I like the idea of exempting some of a contract from the CBA. Maybe they could tie it into the current pre-arb bonus pool? Maybe the amount of pre-arbitration bonus money earned/won can be subtracted from the AAV for calculating CBT payroll? Maybe add a specific amount for awards/honors? $100K, for All star. $250K for silver slugger or gold glove. $5M/$3M/$1M for 1st/2nd/3rd MVP or Cy Young $1M/$500K/$250K for 1st/2nd/3rd in ROY. $500K for W.S. MVP/$250K for LCS MVP. How ever much a player earns during controlled years is subtracted from AAV if player stays with team who owns rights when eligible for FA. Player can't be traded until offseason after contract signed. AAV benefits do not transfer upon trade.
They paid him over $100 million for some extra market rate years. They offered him another 6 to retire here with plenty of reports that he would move on to bigger suitors if they didn’t raise their offer. He’s probably going to end up with a deal very similar to what the Astros offered (or less) because Crane called them on the bluff. Is this a lesson not to sign any sort of early extension? Is this a lesson to not play hardball with Crane? Is this a lesson to all 30+ veterans seeking that final payday? Lots of angles to look at it from. Within the current framework, Crane is optimizing the system to fit his gains… and being a mix of ultra-pragamatic (every Astros drafted star turned trade/FA) with a slight bit of fanboy (Altuve, Hader, JV x 3??),
I get all of it…. But seeing that the increased NBA loyalty hasn’t necessarily resulted in more viewers or newer fans… has baseball truly been hurt by this? League-wide attendance was on the rise this year… pitch clocks and summer breaks, with more playoff possibilities, will keep mid-market spending within reason…. And the true dullards of the league both have new stadium deals pending that could make them something more than they are? (Minus the Marlins who still do nothing attendance wise, despite the new stadium, being in the city, etc.).
Bregman and Boras over played their hand, this is the 2nd or 3rd offseason in a row that Boras has gotten his ass handed to him. The sour grapes from Boras are hilarious. It's hilarious how many pillow deals his clients are taking now. The market is still very good for sure fire HOF players, Bregman is not that and his decreasing production and the fact it takes him 1 or 2 months to get going will likely keep his contract from where he thinks it should be. And that's without any medicals being done on his elbow. There is just no way the Astros should commit 7 years to that dude.
I suggest you look at a list of Boras contracts before you say he “got his ass handed to him”. He had a record-setting offseason.
Is the 317M in today's value or adjusted to what the per War for the years he actually played. Just curious?
We will see, but I do think Bregman overplayed his hand. Once the Astros moved on, he lost a lot of bargaining power. I'm thinking he'll end up with something maybe a little North of the Astros 6/156m offer. He better hope it's not in Fenway park because he seldom hits tall homeruns, although he might get a **** ton of long singles off the monster. I think Paredes outhits him the next 3 years and plays in more games.
