Last week, in response to the massive amount of minor league players being released by organizations across Major League Baseball, Jon Heyman reported that agent Scott Boras pledged to pay the salaries of his minor league clients who were released.
On Tuesday, the MLB Players Association told Boras not to follow through on that pledge, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reports. Boras has complied, instead donating the money he planned to use to pay the minor leaguers to instead help VoteRiders, a non-profit focused on helping citizens exercise their right to vote.
The union has two reasons for doing this. It’s against MLBPA regulations. Other agents noted that Boras being allowed to do that created an unfair advantage, allowing him to better retain clients. Not mentioned in Rosenthal’s column, but something I think should be brought up as well is that with this generous act, Boras would effectively subsidize the owners’ thriftiness, setting a poor precedent.
At any rate, Boras should have conferred with the union and other agents to come up with a collective action plan. It was a noble gesture, but he ultimately didn’t go about it the right way. The union was right to step in on this matter.
