Scott Boras has always had a flair for impeccable timing. With the St. Louis Cardinals on the verge of clinching the NL Central, the superagent said today that Rick Ankiel, a pending free agent and one of his clients, is unlikely to return to St. Louis in 2010. Given Ankiel's shrinking role in an outfield with Colby Rasmus, Matt Holliday (who the Cardinals will likely push to re-sign), and Ryan Ludwick, this news isn't surprising, though it's always something that could be left unsaid until after the Cards' season ends.
Ankiel himself has earned his smaller role, hitting just .235/.287/.395 this season after slugging over .500 in each of his first two seasons as a big league outfielder. Between his poor performance at the plate and all of the injuries he's suffered in the past two years, it's not really surprising that the Cardinals haven't been able to find room for him in the outfield this year.
As the No. 1 overall pick in 1990, Chipper Jones signed with the Braves for $275,000.
Even in today's dollars, that's about $450,000 -- or about 3 percent of Stephen Strasburg was guaranteed as this year's No. 1 pick.
And Jones agreed to his deal the night before the draft, while Strasburg came within two minutes of missing last Monday's deadline to sign.
"I think the only way that you're going to get kids signed and get them into the various camps is to put some kind of cap on it," Jones said. "I was always of the belief that you make your money at the big-league level."
That's how the teams want it too. When the current collective bargaining agreement is up in two years, Major League Baseball may pursue an NBA-style slotting system -- with signing bonuses locked in depending on how high a player is picked, as opposed to the current non-binding slot recommendations.
SEATTLE -- Given that the Mariners have struggled mightily offensively, the signing of No. 2 pick Dustin Ackley serves as a serious momentum boost for an organization looking to escape a series of shaky moves under the Bill Bavasi tenure.
For example, Bavasi traded Adam Jones and George Sherill for Erik Bedard, and he selected Cal's Brandon Morrow over the University of Washington's Tim Lincecum in the 2006 draft. Morrow is in the minors while Lincecum is one of the top starting pitchers in the major leagues.
So the Mariners needed this. They needed to sign the best hitter in college baseball. Ackley hit .422 with 22 home runs and 73 RBI in 66 games for the University of North Carolina. Signing him went down to the final minutes, with general manager Jack Zduriencik revealing that the deal was agreed upon at 8:45 PM PT, about 15 minutes before the deadline.
With just a little less than 48 hours until Monday's midnight deadline to sign picks from June's draft, Washington Nationals' president Stan Kasten told the AP he has "no idea" if top pick Stephen Strasburg will sign with the team. This is despite the Washington Post's report that the Nats have already offered Strasburg a larger signing bonus than any draft pick in history, a report that Kasten more or less confirmed to the AP.
In each of the two seasons that the early deadline has been in place, most of Scott Boras' clients (including Matt Wieters, Pedro Alvarez and Eric Hosmer, all top-six picks in either 2007 or 2008) have gone right up to the midnight deadline before signing. Even if Strasburg has already decided that he wants to accept whatever it is that the Nationals have offered him (likely in the neighborhood of 15-$20 million), the world won't know until Monday.
The players -- all clients of Scott Boras -- did not commit any wrongdoing, but, as early investors in the Stanford Financial Group, are believed to have received dividends from Stanford financed by investors that came after.
Ever since word started to circulate about how special Stephen Strasburg seemed to be, everyone wondered just how agent Scott Boras was going to bend the system to get the most for his client. Boras himself said that Strasburg is unique the day after the draft, but further proof came along Tuesday. Ben McDonald, the former No. 1 pick and phenom, told the Washington Post that he's talked to Boras -- his former agent -- about Strasburg.
"He just told me that he's got a special kid, reminds him of myself a little bit, and they're going to do something 'unusual.' But that's all he told me. I don't know what he's got cooked up."
From the Windup is Matt Snyder's extended look at some aspect of America's pastime each Thursday.
Among the general population of sports fans, Scott Boras is a very unpopular individual. He's referred to as greedy, a snake, and "Bor-ass" (what a clever way to use his name in a derogatory fashion, huh?), among other things. Teams threaten to never deal with him again. Fans claim he's ruining baseball and is everything wrong with professional sports. And on and on -- just check out the reader comments on this Jeff Fletcher piece.
You know what I call him? The best agent in the history of sports.
Drafting Stephen Strasburg No. 1 overall in the MLB Draft was the easy part. Now the Nationals are staring at potentially (OK, likely) two-plus months of negotiations with his adviser, agent Scott Boras.
What are the rest of us left to do? Sit and wait. Gawk at the numbers and rhetoric likely to be thrown out from the Boras camp. Cross our fingers and hope Nationals president Stan Kasten -- one of the more hard-line pro-management executives in the game -- gets in on the fireworks.
That might be fun for a week, but two months? Nah. So the MLB FanHouse gang decided to spice things up the best way we knew how -- by gambling on it.
The rules are simple: Each member of the staff submitted a figure for the total guaranteed value, including bonus, of Strasburg's contract with the Nationals (presuming of course he signs); The Price Is Right rules are in effect. To the winner goes a heavy dose of pride and bragging rights. After the jump, you can see a visual representation of all of our guesses and can leave your own in the comments*.
Scott Boras' policy is not to negotiate through the media, but on Wednesday morning he began negotiating through the media.
A day after the Nationals made Boras client Stephen Strasburg the No. 1 pick in the draft, Boras laid out some of the reasons he believes that Strasburg is no ordinary draft pick, and thus should not be paid like one.
"I don't think you need me to say it, but obviously Stephen falls into that class of players really not associated with the inherent [risk] elements of the draft," Boras said Wednesday morning. "They are just players who happen to be available, whether that be through free agent or posting means. They just have extraordinary ability."
Scott Boras has always had a flair for impeccable timing. With the St. Louis Cardinals on the verge of clinching the NL Central, the superagent said today that Rick Ankiel, a pending free agent and one of his clients, is unlikely to return to St. Louis in 2010. Given Ankiel's shrinking role in an outfield with Colby Rasmus, Matt Holliday (who the Cardinals will likely push to re-sign), and Ryan Ludwick, this news isn't surprising, though it's always something that could be left unsaid until after the Cards' season ends. 
Every Sunday, 
SEATTLE -- Given that the Mariners have struggled mightily offensively, the signing of No. 2 pick 
With just a little less than 48 hours until Monday's midnight deadline to sign picks from June's draft, 
Federal authorities have asked seven Major League Baseball players -- 
Ever since word started to circulate about how special 
The truth can't be avoided any longer. It would be like denying 
Drafting 
