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ARod dumped Boras for endorsement purposes
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=== Epiphany, Dept. ===
And we'd have re-titled it with one word-slot change and one punctuation change, "Scott Boras IS Hurting Prince Fielder!," except for one thing: Prince Fielder hasn't yet signed a disappointing contract.
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=== Prince Fielder ===
Jack Zduriencik has been kind enough to avoid calling Prince a fat man. (Granted, I imagine this might be good business, too...)
But it is one thing for Meryl Streep to blush and say, aw shucks, I'm just happy to be here. It's another thing for Streep to protest that she's the prettiest woman in Hollywood and hey, why am *I* not the one on the cover of Cosmo? She's just asking for somebody to analyze her facial structure.
It's one thing for Prince Fielder to say, look, I'm a team guy and I want to help somebody win. It's another thing for him to say, hey, why are ARod and Pujols getting $250M and I'm not? He's just asking for somebody to ask him what exactly his pant size is, and by the way Scott, what EXACTLY will Prince's UZR be in 2015?
It says here that National League teams are genuinely put off by the idea of Mo Vaughn playing 1B for them in three years. Boras realizes this, no doubt, but has to carry on with the Brave Face now.
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=== Gerry Spence "How To Argue And Win Every Time," Dept. ===
If we're not mistaken, Gerry Spence has never lost a criminal lawsuit. He's blinkin' good at what he does, pal.
Spence's first rule is: concede the other side's strong points. Your own argument will come out looking unavoidable after it has absorbed the other side's best shots.
Scott Boras is the anti-Spence. Boras doesn't concede Fielder's flaws. He just produces shiny books comparing Prince to Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx. And who else has EVER done what Prince has? Ever, ever?
The result is that both we, and the GM's, wave the entire Boras argument off. It says here that the market for Prince Fielder is lukewarm and will stay lukewarm.
Scott Boras has, embarrassingly, put his client in the position of apologizing. Prince Fielder simply does not hit the bar that Scott Boras set for him. Prince Fielder is a cleanup hitter. That's all. He's not a Hall of Famer and he certainly is not Jimmie Foxx (who had OPS+ of 182-205 in six different seasons).
Now baseball spends January staring at the gap between Jimmie Foxx and Prince Fielder, and it's a large gap. So is the gap between Prince and Albert Pujols, and Scott Boras has called attention to that gap.
Fielder would have been better off with a different agent, a nicer guy, an agent more like himself. This was the wrong baseball player to spend the winter boasting about himself.
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=== State of the Zduriencik ===
Yesterday, Baker tweeted Zduriencik's latest comment: "As time goes on, players are going to have to make decisions."
Capt. Jack, bless his captainly little heart, is staring across the poker table at Boras, refusing to flinch. .... Tick. Tick. Tick. .... Nope, still just glaring.
Tell me you don't love the man. You and I are getting clenched up, you and I want resolution, but Capt. Jack with millions at stake is as cool as the other side of the pillow.
Logically: Capt. Jack will win this battle, and the M's will sign Prince Fielder at excellent terms. Leaving money to add on after. In real life: who knows. It's harrowing. :- ) But it's nice when the offseason is as tense as the regular season. Whoops, more tense than the regular season, if you live in Seattle.
If it's bidding, Sea vs WSN -
Then the Mariners, at that point, should simply outbid Washington. That's not asking too much.
As many have pointed out, it can be a long time between Prince Fielders, and the options are liable to cost you some serious minors talent.
We ain't talking about NYY vs Sea. If it comes down to the Nats and us, then pay the man. You don't always have to get a discount, to make a purchase.
I don't think this is a good attitude because non-New York teams are capable offering ridiculous deals to free agents, as the Nationals did with Jayson Werth.
However, there still is absolutely nothing substantial that suggests Washington is seriously pursuing Fielder. The rumors swirling around them now are all still mostly "chatter around the league", not anyone in any position to know and those same anonymous sources from around the league had said the Cubs were the front runner for Prince even though that was patently untrue.
What concrete information we do have strongly suggests the opposite of what all speculation and rumors are saying. Here is what Nationals GM said last week:
As far as, are we going to dabble our toe in that [Fielder] water? Those are decisions that we make early on in the process and we've more or less decided that Adam is going to be our first baseman unless something extraordinary, out of the ordinary happened, that's how we're going to go to Spring Training.
Translation: we already ruled out signing Fielder months ago. Now here is what Boras is saying:
As I’ve told many, there’s a lot of passengers on the PF Flyer. I keep having discussions with teams, and they keep coming back after those discussions. We are having a very robust and constant communication with many teams. We’ve had an opportunity over the last 10 days to certainly get more definition, I would say. Normally in free agency, after a period of time you have teams that move to the background. When we think that’s happened, those teams have called back and they’ve changed their position.
Does that sound like a guy who has teams pounding down his door to sign his client? It's now January and he still clearly is trying to exaggerate how much interest there is which means no one is close to giving in to Boras' demands.
The two things that make me skeptical on WSN -
The Nats have LaRoche under contract, and they paid a $10M team option for him in 2013 as well - which, if LaRoche is healthy, they figured him to overperform -
Also, the Ryan Zimmerman situation is huge in WSN, practically their Felix situation - they have been having 9,000 kinds of trouble getting that done withOUT Fielder... very tough to believe they would want to swap out Zimmerman for Prince Fielder. That's like us saying we'd deal Felix for Joey Votto. Fair on paper or not, it's not sensible.
That said, Geoff Baker's latest column make the WSN bid sound serious indeed ... hopefully he overstated the situation...
Where I think Boras has blown it is that he has said almost nothing along the lines of : PF, great citizen, works hard, true professional, stable lockerroom presence, wants to come to your town, loved by kids and pets, in the best shape of his professional life, wants to be a fireman when he grows up!"
His whole line has been, "Here we are, come and get us."
Then, "Er, guys...here we are!"
Finally, "Really guys, we're still right here!"
He hasn't sold his guy. He's assumed his guy would sell himself.
It didn't work well. Boras hasn't adapted.
I think he also saw the Pujols/Angels deal as setting the (high) value for his guy. He was wrong, IMO. The Angels' deal caused teams to say "Holy Crap!"
Is it possible he still gets 8 years for his guy? Yep? But not bloody likely, I think.