Scott Boras Is the Biggest Loser of the 2023-24 MLB Offseason

For the sake of argument, let's assume two things can be true at once about Scott Boras.

The first is that he's a very good agent, which isn't a point anyone would actually argue against. A quick search on MLB Trade Rumors returns over $9 billion worth of MLB contracts negotiated by Boras, and that's likely not a complete accounting.

But then there's the second thing: Maybe, just maybe, Boras isn't doing his best work right now.

This take could age poorly, but it sure feels right for the moment. Though he's had some hits during the 2023-24 offseason—i.e., $113 million for Jung Hoo Lee and $34 million for Rhys Hoskins—that his five best clients are still languishing in free agency is probably not what he had in mind for late February.

This is Cody Bellinger, Blake Snell, Jordan Montgomery, Matt Chapman and J.D. Martinez, for the record. And for reference, these are the contracts that MLBTR projected at the outset:

• Cody Bellinger: 12 years, $264 million
• Blake Snell: 7 years, $200 million
• Jordan Montgomery: 6 years, $150 million
• Matt Chapman: 6 years, $150 million
• J.D. Martinez: 2 years, $40 million

That's a little over $800 million, and, honestly, is anyone taking the over on any of these?

Opening Day is barely over a month away, after all, and the message coming out of spring training is that Boras' guys either aren't needed or that they would be too pricey.

Boras himself is holding firm, texting Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic: "These are extremely talented players that impact winning outcomes. If owners value winning as their primary goal for their cities and fans they will continue to make every effort to acquire elite talents."

Classic Boras, but will his bluster actually lead to results? Can he save himself from being the biggest loser of the offseason?

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Boras Has a Bad Hand

Look, it's not hard to be optimistic about the aforementioned fivesome.

Each is coming off a successful 2023 season, wherein they produced more wins above replacement on their own than four whole teams. Snell won his second Cy Young Award. Montgomery got a World Series ring. Bellinger won a Silver Slugger. Chapman won a Gold Glove. Martinez was an All-Star.

Yet the reality is that all five of Boras' best guys come with some degree of volatility. They weren't even worth half as much WAR in 2022 as they were in 2023, and the specific storylines aren't much more flattering.

Bellinger? In between his MVP-winning turn in 2019 and his comeback turn in 2023, he posted a .648 OPS and 1.0 rWAR. And even last year, the quality of his contact was abysmal.

Snell? He may have two Cy Youngs, but in between those were four seasons in which he was only 4 percent better than the average pitcher. And even last year, he led MLB in walks.

Montgomery? He's a Tommy John survivor who had a 34th-percentile strikeout rate in 2023.

Chapman? He's settled into a life as a .700-ish OPS guy.

Martinez? Heck of a track record, but at 36, he's at an age when only three hitters have topped 30 home runs within the last decade.

Even setting aside that Bellinger, Snell and Chapman are also tied to draft pick compensation, this hand is nothing like the one Boras had last winter. Xander Bogaerts and Brandon Nimmo were safe bets, while Carlos Correa and Carlos Rodón each had two successive seasons of quality work to offset concerns related to their durability.

The result: $804 million in guaranteed money just for those four.

It'll be a surprise if the Bellinger-Snell-Montgomery-Chapman-Martinez fivesome comes close to that payout. And if they ultimately don't, maybe it will be as simple as never being overly appealing to buyers.

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Boras Also Has a Tough Market

Of course, it's not that simple.

As of now, free-agent spending is way down this offseason. Using Spotrac's numbers, spending went way up from $1.4 billion in 2020-21 to $3.2 billion in 2021-22, and then up again to $3.7 billion for 2022-23. But right now, we're looking at a decrease to $2.2 billion.

If there's one avenue to tsk-tsk Boras for not seeing this coming—or, at least, underestimating the likelihood of its coming—it's that teams only had so much room for further additions after loading up in the two previous winters. To wit, the 37 biggest contracts from the 2022-23 offseason were of the multiyear variety.

Yet this feels almost like a nit-pick relative to the other reason to tsk-tsk Boras. If he might have anticipated anything, it's how much havoc the collapse of regional sports networks was going to wreak on the offseason market.

The collapse started in earnest when Diamond Sports Group, which had been providing television broadcasts for nearly half of all MLB, NBA and NHL games, filed for bankruptcy last March. That had ramifications for two teams just within the 2023 season, and the offseason began with 14 teams facing the prospect of not having any local TV contract by 2025.

Granted, the outlook has gotten less dire. Diamond has gotten a lifeline from Amazon, and it might not be long before MLB has its own direct-to-consumer streaming package.

"Realistically, my target to having a digital package I can take to market would be for the '25 season," commissioner Rob Manfred said earlier this month.

However, lifelines and ideas for plans are no replacement for what teams had gotten used to throughout the 2000s and 2010s: TV deals that guaranteed tens, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars per annum as they ran for years on end.

So while the Los Angeles Dodgers figured to be (and have been with over $1 billion in free-agent investments) an exception, uncertainty was always going to be the name of the game this offseason. It was going to be a tough environment for everyone, including for superagents trying to funnel every last penny into their clients' pockets.

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Is All Hope Lost?

Boras has, however, been known to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Remember when there was panic about whether Bryce Harper would find a suitable deal when the 2019 season was bearing down? Well, Boras got him 13 years and $330 million from the Philadelphia Phillies on the last day of February. And this was only one year after he secured $329 million worth of deals for Martinez, Jake Arrieta and Eric Hosmer in February.

Whereas it's hard to be bullish on Chapman and Martinez, there's still a clear spot for Bellinger on the Chicago Cubs. Owner Tom Ricketts says he's waiting for "whenever he and his agent are going to engage," but Mark Feinsand of MLB.com wrote in January that there's "widespread belief" in a reunion.

Snell, meanwhile, has at least one interested suitor in the New York Yankees, according to Jon Heyman of the New York Post. Heyman also hinted at a strong market for Montgomery in his latest B/R live stream:

It can't hurt Boras' cause that there's pressure on these teams to act. The Boston Red Sox are getting pushed to make additions from Rafael Devers, as are the Los Angeles Angels from Mike Trout. And while Ricketts is playing it cool, Dansby Swanson and Pete Crow-Armstrong have openly called for the Cubs to sign Bellinger.

Otherwise, you never know when an injury is going to open a door.

That's how Boras got Prince Fielder $214 million in January 2012, and there's already been one instance this winter in which an injury directly led to a major signing. That was Josh Hader scoring $95 million from the Houston Astros.

Yet even if the moment hasn't already passed, there is the question of when Boras will have overplayed his hand.

It's happened before. In March 2018, he only got $6.5 million for Mike Moustakas even though he was coming off a 38-homer season. The following year, former Cy Young Award winner Dallas Keuchel lingered on the market into June before signing for $13 million.

It's hard to imagine things getting this bad, at least for Bellinger, Snell and Montgomery. Yet even for them, shorter deals that pay out a fraction of what they were expected to get are realistic possibilities. And if that happens, they're not going to be the only ones wallowing in disappointment.

As noted by Rosenthal, the Boras stalemate has trickled down to other free agents, including Adam Duvall and Tommy Pham. The delay has likely cost them precious dollars, in which case they probably won't be happy if the end result is Boras failing to steer the stalemate to his desired end. It'll be as if he made them wait for nothing.

This, of course, is to say nothing of the broader story of the 2023-24 offseason.

Maybe it never was going to be one for the books, but the fireworks were all in Boras' hands after Shohei Ohtani's and Yoshinobu Yamamoto's record-setting deals got the party started in December. But instead of doing what's practical to set them off, he's made everyone watch as he's just held them. And held them. And held them.

It's been a bore, alright. And at this point, anything less than an explosive finale would be inexcusable.

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Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.