For Scott Boras, the offseason is finally over. It wasn’t a good time.
The 2023-24 MLB offseason will be remembered by many as the winter in which Shohei Ohtani signed his record-shattering, 10-year, $700 million contract. Or for the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ overall $1 billion offensive on the free market. Or for the New York Yankees landing Juan Soto in a blockbuster trade with the San Diego Padres.
It was a lively offseason, but the storyline that took the longest to develop was that of Boras and his big four free agents. Boras entered the winter counting half of Yahoo Sports’ top 10 free agents as clients: reigning Cy Young winner Blake Snell; former MVP Cody Bellinger; playoff hero Jordan Montgomery; defensive ace Matt Chapman; and Korean import Jung Hoo Lee.
Lee quickly signed a $113 million deal with the San Francisco Giants, and that was absolutely a win for Boras. However, the four other players were expected to sign deals bigger than that.
None of them did.
Instead, all four of them took their free agencies into late February or March, then signed shorter-term deals with opt-outs that give them the ability to retest the market next offseason if they perform as well as last year. Montgomery was the last to sign, agreeing to a one-year, $25 million deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks on Tuesday. Suffice to say, that was not Boras’ plan.
The guaranteed money doled out to the top 10 free agents shows how badly this went (Boras clients in bold):
Shohei Ohtani: 10 years, $700 million
Yoshinobu Yamamoto: 12 years, $325 million
Aaron Nola: seven years, $172 million
Blake Snell: two years, $62 million
Cody Bellinger: three years, $80 million
Jordan Montgomery: one year, $25 million
Sonny Gray: three years, $75 million
Matt Chapman: three years, $54 million
Josh Hader: five years, $95 million
Jung Hoo Lee: six years, $113 million
Boras is well known for his strategy of prioritizing free agency over extensions and his willingness to wait out teams for the biggest deals for his clients. It’s a strategy that has worked very well in the past, with some hiccups here and there.
This winter was definitely bigger than a hiccup. Let’s go through each of the big four, what they were expected to get, what they turned down and why teams might’ve been apprehensive to back up the Brink’s truck.
Blake Snell
Median Fangraphs crowdsource projection: five years, $125 million
Reported asking price: $270 million
Reality: two years, $62 million (with an opt-out)
Snell won the NL Cy Young award last season, one of 22 pitchers in the history of baseball to win the award multiple times, and ended up getting less than half of what his former teammate Tyler Glasnow got from the Los Angeles Dodgers (a five-year, $135 million extension).
It’s hard to see Snell improving on a Cy Young season, which makes the short, prove-it deal especially awkward.
If you’re wondering why so many teams were hesitant to bring in Snell, it probably starts with his age. At 31, Snell is old for an elite, first-time free agent. He has also been volatile for a supposedly elite pitcher, in both health and performance. His two Cy Young wins happen to be the only seasons in his career in which he threw more than 130 innings.
His 2023 also included some peripheral red flags, most notably a career-worst 13.3% walk rate. Add all that together, and you can see why some teams were apprehensive to bet Snell would be worth elite pitcher money at age 35.
Even with all that, though, Snell was reportedly offered a six-year, $150 million deal from the New York Yankees at one point this offseason. Boras would probably prefer he forget that.
Cody Bellinger
Fangraphs projection: six years, $144 million
Reported asking price: $200 million+
Reality: three years, $80 million (with two opt-outs)
Bellinger really was excellent in 2023, parlaying a change in scenery from the Dodgers to Chicago Cubs into one of…
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