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There are five main negotiation styles: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, and accommodating. However, Forbes’ number one sports agent for four consecutive years, Scott Boras, only knows one negotiation style: winning.
Well before he became sports’ most notorious agent, Scott Dean Boras was born in Sacramento, California. He grew up in Elk Grove and attended University of the Pacific where he walked on to the baseball team. The Pacific baseball program named their annual “Most Improved Player” award after Boras for his impressive play on the field. After college, Boras played four years of minor league baseball, but knee problems shortened his career.
However, Boras’s knee problems did not prevent him from putting his imprint on the game of baseball. After returning to University of the Pacific to obtain a law degree, Boras worked as an associate in the pharmaceutical defense department of the Chicago firm Rooks, Pitts & Poust (now Dykema Gossett).
After realizing that defending drug companies against class-action lawsuits was not his calling, Boras decided to try his hand as a baseball agent, representing Cleveland Indians shortstop Mike Fischlin and Seattle Mariners closer Bill Caudill. One of his first wins as an agent came when he negotiated a five-year contract worth more than seven million dollars for Caudill in 1983, making him one of the highest-paid relievers in baseball at the time.
Scott Boras has found incredible success negotiating contracts for newly drafted MLB prospects. In 1990, Boras got $1.2 million guaranteed with a $500,000 signing bonus from the Oakland Athletics for the fourteenth pick in the draft, a high school pitcher named Todd Van Poppel. Then in 1991, Boras negotiated a $1.55 million signing bonus from the Yankees for pitcher Brien Taylor. Both of these signings set records at the time.
In 2007, Boras negotiated a $7.3 million contract for Rick Porcello, who was drafted with the 27th pick in the draft. This marked the largest contract ever given to a high school player.
Boras repeated his success more than once in the 2009 Draft, breaking multiple records. The first pick in the draft, Stephen Strasburg, received $15.1 from the Nationals, which was the largest contract in draft history.
Boras was also able to negotiate three different record-breaking signing bonuses, including Donavan Tate’s $6.25 million, which was the largest ever for a high school player, Jacob Turner’s $4.7 million, which was the largest ever for a high school pitcher, and Dustin Ackley’s $6 million, which was tied for the largest upfront bonus in history.
The negotiating success for Boras with MLB draftees continued every year, and he continued to break the records he had previously set himself. In 2011, while representing Gerrit Cole, who was drafted 28th by the Pirates, Boras negotiated an $8 million signing bonus, surpassing the $7.5 million bonus he got Strasburg two years prior for the highest bonus of all time.
In the same draft and with the same Pittsburg Pirates, Boras was able to get second-round pick Josh Bell $5 million, which exceeded any other player drafted in the second round’s salary by more than $1.5 million. Due to the impressive values of these two contracts — Cole’s and Bell’s from Pittsburg — Boras negotiated more money from the Pirates than any other team had ever spent on its entire draft.
As impressive as these records are for Boras, of course they are going to be broken with the way MLB player salaries have inflated over the years; a signing bonus from 2011 is likely to be larger than one from 1980. The records that Boras broke through his unrivaled negotiating skills are likely to be broken again, and likely by him.
The impressive thing that Boras has done is negotiating massive contracts for draft picks, obtaining signing bonuses significantly higher than the slot value (the expected signing bonus value for a specific draft pick). Boras acquiring a signing bonus above the slot value is as safe a bet as Wyoming voting for the Republican in a presidential election (they haven’t voted for a Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964).
After the 2012 draft, only five first round picks had signed a deal that was above their slot value, and three of them — Addison Russell (Athletics), Deven Marrero (Red Sox), and Lance McCullers (Astros) — were clients of Scott Boras.
Boras also represented pitching prospect Mark Appel, who was drafted by the Pirates with the eighth pick in the 2012 Draft. However, instead of signing for the slot value of $2.9 million, Appel decided to return to school. This decision paid off financially, as Appel was taken with the first pick in the 2013 Draft by the Astros, signing for $6.35 million.
One of Boras’s most impressive negotiations was for another 2013 MLB draft pick, pitcher Sean Manaea. Manaea was drafted by the Royals and received a $3.55 million signing bonus, which was a record for a supplemental round pick. This was almost $2 million above the slot value. Why does this deal of all of Scott Boras’ deals with MLB draftees stand out among the rest? Well, the Royals drafted Manaea knowing he would need hip surgery to repair a torn labrum before he could play again and still gave him $2 million more than he was expected to get.
In 2014, Boras negotiated a large signing bonus for another injured player. Erick Fedde underwent Tommy John surgery days before the draft, and yet, Boras negotiated a $2.511 million signing bonus, which was $365,500 above slot value.
Of the top three draft picks of the 2014 draft, two of them received signing bonuses well below their slot value, with the first pick getting a bonus $821,800 below the slot value, and the second pick getting a bonus almost $1.5 million below the slot value.
The White Sox drafted Carlos Rodon with the third pick, and he received a signing bonus that was $860,500 above the slot value. I bet you can guess who represented Rodon: Scott Boras.
(Larry Goren/Icon SMI)
Boras has had equal success negotiating contracts for established MLB players, breaking many records and setting new precedents throughout his career. In 1997, he negotiated the first $50 million deal for Greg Maddux from Atlanta and followed that up by rewarding Kevin Brown the first $100 million deal from the Dodgers in 1998.
On December 11, 2000, the Texas Rangers and Alex Rodriguez agreed to terms on a ten-year, $252 million contract. This deal that Boras negotiated shattered every deal that had ever come before it in professional sports. However, the Rangers couldn’t endure the Rodriguez contract and traded him to the Yankees in 2004 who would eventually sign him to another record-breaking, 10-year, $275 million deal after A-Rod opted out of his Rangers deal with three years and $72 million remaining.
I could continue this list of accomplishments from Scott Boras, but if you wanted to read his resume, you could just look him up on Wikipedia. What is most impressive about Boras is his impact on the MLB. In 1996, Boras represented Matt White, who was drafted seventh overall by the Giants, and Bobby Seay, who was drafted 12th overall by the White Sox. Instead of signing with their respective teams, Boras used a loophole that said that players became free agents if the team that drafted them did not offer them a contract within two weeks. Boras used this loophole for many of his clients, but the majority of them ultimately signed with the team that drafted them.
However, that was not the case for White and Seay. The two of them signed with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, MLB’s new expansion team. White signed for $10.2 million, and Seay received a $3 million signing bonus, which were both considerably more than what they would have received if they signed with their drafted team. White Sox owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, is still bitter about being “outsmarted” by Boras.
The next year, MLB changed this rule, removing the loophole that Boras had taken advantage of to get his clients more money.
In 1997, Scott Boras was representing J.D. Drew, who was drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies. When they offered him $3 million, Boras advised Drew to decline the Phillies offer. He then signed a deal with the St. Paul Saints, an independent professional baseball team.
At the time, only amateurs were allowed to partake in the draft, which was known as the “amateur draft.” Because he had signed a deal with a professional team, Drew was not eligible for the draft. Boras and the MLBPA filed a grievance to have him declared a free agent because of this. Boras won, but the arbitrator ruled that since Drew was not a member of the MLBPA, he could not become a free agent.
The next year, J.D. Drew re-entered the draft, signing with the St. Louis Cardinals for nearly three times the Phillies best offer. Because of what Boras had done with Drew in attempting to earn him more money, the MLB changed the name of the draft to the “First Year Player Draft.”
(USA Today)
Scott Boras has had an incredible impact on Major League Baseball, and as an agent, it is hard to believe someone who merely negotiates contracts for players can change the league so much. Boras has pushed the bounds on the amount of money that people thought was possible for MLB players to earn. Boras did so this past offseason when, after a grueling winter, he got the Phillies to agree to sign Bryce Harper to a 13-year, $330 million contract. Although it had a lower average annual value than the contract that the Nationals offered him at the beginning of the offseason, Harper’s Phillies deal broke the record for the longest and largest deal in MLB history.
Harper’s deal set the precedent for Mike Trout to earn a 12-year, $430 million extension. Although Boras does not represent Trout, the work he has done in the past — for Harper and other clients — paved the way for Trout to receive his monumental extension. (Trout being a generational talent and on his way to becoming arguably the best player of all-time also helped).
It is hard to overstate how impressive of a career Scott Boras has had as a baseball agent. A list of all of his accomplishments is the only thing longer than a CVS receipt, and it is no mystery why his Boras Corporation, which controls 67 clients and $1.9 billion in contracts, is Forbes’ most valuable single-sport agency in the world.