The waiting game for free agents Jordan Montgomery, Cody Bellinger, Blake Snell and Matt Chapman continues as agent Scott Boras waits for the market to come to him.
There has been some recent buzz on the Snell front. Multiple media outlets are reporting that the New York Yankees made an earlier offer to the National League Cy Young Award winner.
The New York Post reported that the team may be willing to top the six-year, $162 million deal it gave Carlos Rodon to get Snell. Due to luxury tax concerns, the Yankees favor a longer-term deal with a lower average annual value to a shorter-term deal with a higher AAV.
Meanwhile the Chicago Cubs remain interested in Bellinger, but only at the right price.
“We’re just waiting. Waiting for whenever he and his agent are going to engage,” Cubs owner Tom Ricketts told reporters. “It could be any time now or it could be a few weeks. We’ll see where it goes.”
The San Francisco Giants are keeping an eye on the Boras clients. And the Los Angeles Angels have money to spend after losing Shohei Ohtani, so insiders consider them an option for the Boras Four.
Angels star Mike Trout is lobbying team owner Arte Moreno to jump into the bidding.
“There's a couple of guys out there still that can help this team [be] better,” Trout told reporters. “I'm going to keep pushing as long as I can until the season starts or until them guys sign. It is just in my nature. I'm doing everything I can possible. It's obviously Arte's decision. I'm going to put my two cents in there.”
This is exactly the dynamic that Boras bets on while holding out for bigger contracts. As time goes on, pressure mounts on front offices to do something – and inevitably some executives and owners bow to that pressure.
This is why baseball commissioner Rob Manfred pushed for a free agent signing deadline during the last round of collective bargaining with the players.
“One of the tactics that's available to player representatives is to stretch out the negotiation in the belief that they're going to get a better deal,” Manfred told the Associated Press. “That's part of the system right now. There's not a lot we can do about it. But certainly from an aspirational perspective, we'd rather have two weeks of flurried activity in December, preferably around the winter meetings.”
Boras will do everything in his considerable power to prevent the implementation of such a deadline. That would erase the leverage he builds with his waiting game.
“Deadlines are death-lines to the players,” Boras told The Athletic. “It's a death of their right (to free agency). It's an artificial reason not to get your value. Teams cannibalize deadlines. Everything they would do would be around the deadline. 'I'll wait and get this value at this time, because I have a deadline,' rather than, 'What's the player worth?'”
Boras has been able to play many owners over the years, but Bill DeWitt Jr. isn’t one of them. So Tipsheet doesn’t see the odds of a Montgomery reunion with the Cardinals improving as time rolls on.
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“It's never been a top priority for me. This is a job. I do this to make a living. My faith, my family come first before this job. So if those things come before it, I'm leaving.”
Angels third baseman Anthony Rendon, who is playing under a $245 million contract, on his view of baseball.
