Excellent Scott Boras piece

[BYH]

From today's Boston Globe magazine. This is long but well-worth it. Really well done.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2007/04/01/why_scott_boras_is_the_best_and_worst_thing_to_happen_to_baseball/?page=1

 

[SCEditor]

It's written by Charles Pierce. It could only have been good. Thanks for the link.

 

[The Big Ragu]

Excellent, fun-to-read piece. Really captured the essence of the guy in the early part of the story.

Boras is Darth Vadar. But he is amazingly good at what he does. I know an agent who is on the tier below Boras (everyone is, but this guy is a very good agent, on the next tier), who has gotten some ridiculous contracts the last few years that have had some people scratching their heads. This agent is known for his preparation, much like Boras. His free agency and arbitration briefs--several of which I have seen--are amazing in their scope and detail, and they have gotten some amazing contracts for some semi-scrubby (my opinion) players. But from what I've heard they pale in comparison to what Boras floats out there for his free agents.

I did see one... Last year, someone gave me a binder with a free agency presentation Boras had been sending around during the offseason for a player who had gotten several teams to eat the forbidden fruit already and had left them snake bitten. You'd have figured few teams were going to pay much for this guy and not without poking him with a 10-foot pole first. Reading the comparisons in this thing, you'd have thought Boras was selling Cy Young. And this player did get a contract that was for way more money than I would have figured any executive with a set of eyes would have ever given him. Of course, the player was brutal last year... Which makes me wonder how dumb some of the guys in front offices are?

 

[slappy4428]

Scott Boras... well written , entertaining story, but this would only be good subject matter if the final couple of grafs began: "He was found floating in the East River, his face ashen gray with so many marine creatures starting to feast on his body like he preyed on clients and teams alike..."

 

[The Big Ragu]

Slappy, disagree that he preys on anyone. MANY players are cut throat. They can sign with any agent they want and poaching is fairly common. Players go with him because he gets them big contracts. They are preying on him as much as he is preying on them. As for the teams, no one is forcing them to agree to those contracts. And they wouldn't be unless they could afford to. It's hard for the Average Joe to negotiate most things, whether it's for a higher salary or a good deal on a car. So put it into that kind of perspective. It'd be damned near impossible for the typical player to figure out his true worth relative to the market and then stare down team executives who do these negotiations over and over again, unlike the player who isn't an experienced shark--just a baseball player. Boras is just an equalizing factor. He is as experienced at negotiating as the GM he is sitting across from. And he's damned good at what he does. I don't particularly like the personality, but you have to respect what he does.

 

[boots]

Let's put this in perspective. Boras doesn't hold a gun to the owner's heads. He gives them a figure. They counter. Remember, no owner is going to pay a player more than what the owner makes. They get no sympathy from boots.

 

[Trouser_Buddah]

Who doesn't love a good third-person reference by Boots...

 

[slappy4428]

Who doesn't love a good third-person reference by Boots...

Slappy don't, he said to me...

 

[fmrsped]

Trouser, your log log just made me laugh really loudly in my office. Well done.

 

[Boom_70]

Interesting but inaccurate in that story leaves impression that "Money Ball" and Billy Beane ushered in the era of baseball when statistics became so important in how players were viewed.

Pierce must not have read Money Ball because if he had he would have know that it was Sandy Alderson who really pioneered the whole concept and actually introduced it to Billy Beane.

 

[Pastor]

I enjoyed reading that. I am not sure why everyone believes that Pierce declared Beane as the innovator of statistics. It didn't leave that impression with me.

 

[Boom_70]

I enjoyed reading that. I am not sure why everyone believes that Pierce declared Beane as the innovator of statistics. It didn't leave that impression with me.

This was the part of story that did it for me:

In the mid-1970s, when free agency started and the sport lost its reserve system, under which teams owned the rights to their players in virtual perpetuity, it became much harder work being a baseball executive. Information became a valued commodity. As teams had to compete for players within what was becoming a more open marketplace, the numbers became an end in and of themselves. This dynamic helped shape a new way of looking at the game. It happened in the front offices, as a younger generation of executives took over and began to apply their own innovative theories to building a ballclub, most of which depended purely on information – on new statistics and on old statistics looked at in new ways, a phenomenon described most vividly by Michael Lewis in Moneyball, his best-selling study of Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics. In this context, agents are accepted as simply another element of doing business.

You just cannot write something like that and not mention Sandy Alderson.

 

[Pastor]

I'm sure that is the part that did it for you since it was the only part that mentioned Money Ball. While you may want to focus on the aspect of Michael Lewis and his book getting mentioned, you left out why it was mentioned.

It isn't stated that Beane invented statistics driven analysis. It states that "...a phenomenon described most vividly in..." the book is mentioned because it describes, not invents, this method.

Would you rather it be written:
...a phenomenon described most vividly by Michael Lewis in Moneyball, his best-selling study of Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics but actually was created by Sandy Alderson.

 

[HejiraHenry]

That was worth reeading to the end of, and I rarely feel that way any more.

 

[Boom_70]

I'm sure that is the part that did it for you since it was the only part that mentioned Money Ball. While you may want to focus on the aspect of Michael Lewis and his book getting mentioned, you left out why it was mentioned.

It isn't stated that Beane invented statistics driven analysis. It states that "...a phenomenon described most vividly in..." the book is mentioned because it describes, not invents, this method.

Would you rather it be written:
...a phenomenon described most vividly by Michael Lewis in Moneyball, his best-selling study of Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics but actually was created by Sandy Alderson.

I am not going to suggest how it should have been written but I do think that greater accuracy could have been brought to this part.

I loved Money Ball but I also think it was flawed for the same reasons.

 

[Johnny Dangerously]

I didn't have a problem with the reference. It's what the piece called for. You can't give the full history of every tangent. Had the main focus been on statistics, then it might have begged for more background.

Most people have heard of "Moneyball," which indeed did capture the phenomenon most vividly.

 

[Boom_70]

I didn't have a problem with the reference. It's what the piece called for. You can't give the full history of every tangent. Had the main focus been on statistics, then it might have begged for more background.

Most people have heard of "Moneyball," which indeed did capture the phenomenon most vividly.

Fair enough but I still think greater clarity could have been brought to piece with just a few more words.

 

[Johnny Dangerously]

What was unclear?

 

[Boom_70]

What was unclear?

At the risk of sounding dogmatic I think what is unclear is when the trend came about and who pioneered the idea that stats really were an end in themselves.

Otherwise great article.