Shut up, Scott Boras.

By now, you’ve probably seen what Scott Boras had to say about the Mets yesterday, which was a typical “they aren’t giving my clients any money!” comment.

If you haven’t yet, here is the non-140-character version:

"The Mets are like NASA. They have big rockets, a lot of platforms and very few astronauts. Astronauts are hard to find. They’ve got one guy with the ‘Wright stuff,’ that’s for sure. And they’ve got a lot of ‘Arm-strongs’ too. But they are certainly a club I am not sure is in pursuit of the higher-level talent…The hardest part about (less than $100-million contract) limits, is it doesn’t limit the other guys. It limits you….“I can’t address (whether it’s odd to hear a New York team say it won’t go the mega-deal route). I can only tell you it’s a process where in this paradigm, I don’t think anyone will want to hear that revenues are limited. I don’t think anyone will want to hear that the next television contract (is limited) or maybe that I’m going to limit the price of tickets. But limits are normally in a process where you have many, many variables. It’s hard to unilaterally apply a limit….“The NL East is going to be a lot more difficult than it was a year ago. I think there’s a couple of teams that could be very, very different and a lot more competitive. And even the teams that are not considered to compete are going to be a lot better. So it’s going to be a lot harder to get wins in the National League East.”"

Of course, the beat went to Sandy, who chuckled at the “Astronaut” comment:

"I’ll just say I’m not sure Scott has his intergalactic analogies completely correct or even if I understand what he meant.”"

Scott Boras is in the business of getting his clients the most money he can. Not having a New York franchise there to shell out long-term $100 million contracts hurts his leverage. The thing is, most of these long-term contracts end up burning the teams and inhibit them from going forward properly. Sandy Alderson is right when he says “…it’s difficult to put those kinds of resources and concentrate those kinds of resources in very few players. It’s not really how you build a quality, sustainable, winning team.”

And guess what? The Mets already have one $138 million contract. They have recently been burned by long-term deals that did not get them the production and value they were looking for, and it’s taken till this offseason for that to open them up to even think about talking to “the A-listers” if you will (obviously on top of the Madoff mess.) Regardless of your opinions on the Wilpons and the financial situation, the Mets have recent memory to point to when it comes to NOT handing these, let’s face it, outlandish $100 million contracts out.

Once upon a time, players would negotiate their 1-year deals, bounded by the reserve clause, in the back of executive’s cars at their team’s spring training facility. It was a hard fight to finally get the players the rights they deserved, especially considering they are the primary entertainment making the owners millions and millions of dollars. While baseball players and their agents have rightfully earned the ability to reap those benefits, a lot of that money thrown around ends up going nowhere.

Let’s take the contract Scott Boras “negotiated” for his client, Oliver Perez, with Omar Minaya (I put “negotiated” in quotes because I really don’t believe there was anybody else out there looking to shell out $12 million per year to Oliver Perez, and that was apparently the starting point everyone was talking about before the season ended. So, Omar Minaya was basically negotiating against himself for a player that had a 4.22 ERA in 2008 and led the league in walks). The contract was $36 million over 3 years. Let’s assume Boras takes 10% of that, meaning before taxes, he’s taking home $3.6 million from a client who didn’t even come close to earning that money in the 3 years he made $12 million per year. And Scott Boras has many, many clients.

Look, I get it. Scott Boras has a job to do. And do the job he will.

But shut up.

Just…shut up.

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