Agent Scott Boras held a press conference at the GM meetings and, as expected, he went off on a number of things, including teams intentionally tanking and the free agency of his client Bryce Harper. Per Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports:
Scott Boras’ State of the Union address is off and going. He has three pages of notes. He starts off by crushing MLB attendance and blaming it on teams being non-competitive. He said the Blue Jays are suffering from “Blue Flu” and the Marlins bring “the M-I-A to Miami.”
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 7, 2018
Per Joel Sherman of the New York Post, Boras also described the system that rewards teams for tanking as a “cancer.” While the description is intentionally overboard, his underlying point is not wrong. The system is currently perversely set up to encourage teams to go to one extreme or the other in terms of competitiveness, which hurts the overall product as well as specific things like the free agent market. Hence why so many players have taken so long to sign contracts in recent years.
Scott Boras on Bryce Harper: “Certainly Harper’s bazaar has begun. It’s fashionable. It’s historical. It’s elite. Global certainly. And certainly it has inspirations that deal with great shoes and great hair.”
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 7, 2018
It’s on all of us that we didn’t see “Harper’s bazaar” coming from a thousand miles away.
Also, per Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Boras said that another client, Adrián Beltré, still hasn’t decided if he plans to play next season. Beltré turns 40 years old in April and has been slowed by injuries in the last two seasons, but he has thown that he can still hit and play defense capably.