No Negotiation Is Ever Easy With Scott Boras

You rarely if ever hear about prolonged holdouts or contract negotiation problems unless Scott Boras is involved.  For Boras it’s the norm.  It could be Alex Rodriguez,  J.D. Drew, Pedro Alvarez, or most recently the drama of Manny Ramirez. As a fan of baseball, you hate Scott Boras.  As a media member, you tolerate Scott Boras as he makes for good copy.  As a professional baseball player, you love Scott Boras as he typically finds a way to get his players top dollars.  And that’s all Scott Boras cares about.

Scott Boras joined Mason and Ireland on ESPN Radio Los Angeles on Thursday to discuss Manny Ramirez finally signing with the Dodgers. “One thing Manny told me throughout this was look if you tell me you can’t get a deal done with LA than we can look into other places with specific negotiations, but until you say that we’re going to continue to try to work on this deal.”

What type of negotiations did the economy play in the negotiations?

“The economy is a weight, I think one of the arguments is when the economy is good do we get to go in and say we deserve more than the what the player’s value would customarily be in a good economy and therefore we would deserve less in a bad economy.  Normally in my job you often don’t hear in a good ecomony owners making the argument well you get more because we’re doing really well.  You only hear the latter, but in this case there certainly is some foundation for concern.  And our compromise really was the fact that we’d be willing to take less years of guarantee to play for the Dodgers.”