PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Just let Boras negotiate

Episode Date: January 29, 2022

On this episode, Jesse and Derek are discussing super agent Scott Boras' impact on the CBA negotiations and maybe just letting him get the new deal done. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to a special Saturday edition of the PHNX DBAX podcast right here on PHNX. My name is Derek Montia, officially known as your mayor of PHNX. And of course, I am joined by my co-host, my friend, my vice mayor, the one and only Thunderstick, Jesse Friedman. You just couldn't get enough of me, huh, Derek? So we're back on, we're back on Saturday. Or maybe you just felt so bad about what you did to me on the live show on Thursday that you just felt the need to try to make up. for what happened that day. Maybe that's what it was. Or, or maybe it's the fact that National Jesse was wrong day was questioned by one of the two hosts on this show. And I needed

to solidify that here we are on the other side of it, Saturday, January 29th, and there is no lockout deal. There is no lockout end. Jesse was wrong. He's wrong. He's still wrong. and we're confirming is wrong. I came here. I lured you into this trap to come here on a Saturday morning just to rub in your face once again. How wrong you are.

Midnight came and went. I did a dance. I had a drink. I couldn't taste it because I'm still ill, of course. But it didn't stop me from celebrating the end of national. Jesse was wrong day.

But of course, this show is not brought to you by Jesse was wrong day. This show is brought to you by the fine folks at the Draft King's Sports book app. Go download the Draft King's Sportsbook app right now. Use our code of PHNX. And on this weekend, this fantastic weekend of playoff football, the last weekend of playoff football, you can get 56 to one odds on any NFL team, bet just $5 and win $280 in free bets if your team wins over at the Draft King's Sportsbook app. Well, Jesse. I really walked into that, didn't I? You really did. I,

You invited that upon yourself. It's like, I was hoping to tap into your sympathetic side, which I know deep down there is, there is some, some sympathy, but I guess not. I don't know of that side. Not in the last few days. I haven't, I haven't seen that version of you in it in a while now. Well, it's wrong of you. And that it's wrong of you. Yes, it's wrong of you.

It was wrong of you. Just like so many things were wrong. That came out of your mouth. But, uh, again. clothing at all in any way about that as we march on 14th is not that far away it's coming jesse the end of the lockout is near because of course you know that means that i have to be right if you were wrong that means i have to be right and the lockout needs to end uh on valentine's day of course in time for everybody to celebrate uh with their valentines you know that you don't want to get yelled at by

your valentine because you're in a cba negotiation meeting uh god forbid that and from apparently recent comments made by ESPN's Buster Only, those CBA negotiation meetings are kind of being driven a little bit by an unexpected source, Jesse. Well, I say unexpected, but it's not really unexpected. It's not unexpected. Of course not. Super Agent Scott Boris apparently has a lot more power than a lot of us were led to believe a super agent could have on the CBA negotiations. But Buster only ranks our friend Scott Boris at number two, as far as who he feels currently has the most influence in determining the terms of the new CBA. His quote. Rob Manfred is number one, presumably?

I presume. Number two, in his words, number two would be Scott Boris, who I think has a lot of influence as to what's going on here. Most of the executive committee for the Players Association has made up of Scott Boris clients. he is perceived by a lot of other folks in the union on the major league baseball side to have a lot of influence as to what's going on and the players that only is referencing is five of the eight members of the executive players committee uh and five of those members are garrett carrick cole max sherser zach britain marcus simian and james paxton all scott boris clients yeah this really isn't that surprising i guess at the end of the day i mean

Scott Boris seems to pop up in all sorts of news that we don't really expect him to be present in, and yet this happens over and over and over again. But yeah, I mean, it's not necessarily that surprising, especially given the nature of what is being talked about here. A big talking point that we've discussed earlier in previous shows is that, you know, one of the things being floated around is the idea that arbitration might not be a thing anymore, right? this process that has been in baseball for quite a while to determine player salaries right before

they hit free agency. There has been a movement to try to get rid of that predominantly coming from the owner's side of things who view it as an outdated system. And we've talked about how awkward it is that you have a team basically debating with the player's agent, why the player is not worth what they think they are. it's very weird um but that move if that was to happen if arbitration was to um was to be dissolved what would happen is people like scott boris would not really be they might have a harder time finding a job their their role would be diminished um because that's a big part of what agents do

is is negotiate in those arbitration terms um so that's definitely a big reason here why someone like Scott Boris and I'm sure a lot of other agents out there have an interest in what's happening because it's possible that what happens between the players and the owners could change what their roles look like moving forward. Scott Boris represents roughly 175 players. He's got to be so rich. Like he's got to be just so good. Yeah, like wealthy beyond either of our.

imaginations, right? I wonder what his commission is. What do you, what do you think Scott Boris's commission is on a, on a contract that he helps the player sign? Three percent, five, five percent, one percent? I mean, are we talking about overall future earnings? Are we just talking about of that contract, that deal? I assume that's how it works, right? Like Scott Borris, you hire Scott Boris, he helps you sign a free agent contract and he takes a cut of the contract you just signed. Scott Boris earns a 5% commission on all contracts he negotiates for his clients. Oh my gosh. And he represents how many people?

175. Oh my gosh. Yeah. That means that he makes significantly more than any of the players that he works with, probably. He represents Fernando Tatis Jr., correct? I don't remember. off the top of my head. Can we baseball reference this? I'm on it right now. I would be a significant one. Yeah. Apparently, no. No. No. Okay. Yeah. MVP sports group,

it looks like. Yeah, it does not. So apparently, Scott, the reason why I see that is because apparently Scott Boris had some very negative things to say about Fernando Tet. Tise's contract. And I probably would agree with him on a lot of those things. You know, I think that, yeah, getting $340 million for 14 years is a great thing. It's an incredible thing. But I bet in the long-term scheme of it, he could have earned way more. Boris would have gotten him way more with the risk being that he would need to perform consistently throughout his

career, right? At this point, Fernando Tatis Jr. could pretty much not, I mean, that's that $340 million, those 14 years, that's, those are, that's a contract that's given to him, right? Whether he's good or mediocre or whatever, he's getting that money. And yeah, I don't know how much of it is incentive based or, you know, whatever, but baseball, there's a lot of guaranteed contracts. Yeah. Like, especially like football has more of a mix where it's pretty rare for a contract to be fully guaranteed. But baseball is just like, here it is. You could hit a buck 75 for the for the next 10 years and you're still going to make this money no matter what. And I guess that's the part of it that I wonder where it's motivation for anybody, right? Like, I mean, we all are motivated by things. And at times if we were given all the

money that we've were ever dreamed of that i just don't know how you'd still be motivated at times to do certain things perform at a certain level you know whatever right like you you start living life in a completely different way because uh having that amount of money literally changes you as a person you you'd want to think it doesn't right you know i had this conversation with my wife the other day, but I was like, I totally understand just on the basis of if I had a friend that was like a millionaire, I would be annoyed that like when I was working, you know, I needed to hear from him talking about how he was going to a visa again and wants me to like, hey, you want to go with me on the private jet? It's like, no, I know I have work. I have stuff. I can't just leave

on a Wednesday to a visa, right? Like, so I see how like money, even if you were still trying to be like a normal person with normal friends would still alienate you from people who don't have that same level of wealth, right? So like I can imagine even as a baseball player, having that level of wealth starts to change you as a person and you even, maybe even your interests in the game, right? You were, you were interested in playing this game to achieve that level of wealth one day. But if you achieve it at an early age and now you're just set for life, I can't, I feel like it would take a very disciplined person to still continue to be like, all right, the money side of things is taken care of. Now I need to focus on my craft this sport. Right. Yeah. Like there are amazing is that I feel like,

I feel like the quality of person you're talking about, like the type of person who somehow isn't changed by the amount of money that they make, I feel like there's a lot of them in professional sports like like to a certain to a certain degree right i mean i think making that amount of money is going to change you in some respect no matter what but the number of players who get paid and then you know change as a person or stop trying on the field or like those are rare stories right yeah you're right you're right about that often seem to be the same guys they were before sure and and and that's that's the part of me that honestly as a regular person is impressed by that. And again, that was what their goal was, right? So a lot of people are

like now they have an obligation, right? They've, this team put their trust in them as a individual to be a future of their franchise and they're not going to let them down, right? So they are going to do everything they can to come out and get better every single day. They're going to work out. They're going to, you know, put in all of that time and all of that, right? I guess when you look at it, that probably isn't the case for the debacks with Yismani Tomas, right? They gave Yzmani Tomas all the money. We saw him have a good season, a season that you could say, okay, this is a great foundation to build on. And that was the best season of baseball he ever played in his career.

You know, that was it. And what was striking with him is when you would send him down, his numbers would be worse. Like, he was not a good. player in AAA. And he wasn't a guy that got he wasn't a guy that got motivated by being sent down. He wasn't a guy. He is one of the prime candidates I think of when I think of this type of contractual situation.

This situation where you literally had somebody get the money and then just be like, hey, awesome. I'm the king of Reno now. You know, I'm taking over this town with all this money and all this time I have because I'm not putting in the work. so I've plenty of time to be doing other stuff. You know, I know that there are plenty of players out there that, you know, even when their numbers have dipped down after getting a big contract,

it wasn't because of anything other than, you know, baseball, right? Baseball, sometimes you do have that all-star season. You peak at one point. You're still able to perform at a high level as far as baseball goes. You're still able to not be a mediocre player, but you might not ever get back to that season where you hit, over 300, you know, and had 30 home runs or whatever, you know, 100 plus RBI. Those kind of seasons are rare.

The guys that can put them up for a consistent long period of time, those are the great players that deserve the big contracts. But now we're getting to a point now where teams are trying to like eyeball a Fernando Tatis Jr. situation where they want to just lock somebody up they think is going to be a great player to a long-term contract that's a whole bunch of money. And again, seeing Scott Boris's comments here on it, I can understand why Scott Boris isn't necessarily one of those guys, as far as an agent goes.

But Scott Boris is a guy that goes in and gets that big money in, you know, like a five-year contract for those guys that really do separate themselves as the superstars of the league. He's excellent at negotiating on their behalf and making them, I think making baseball teams realize what a commodity. those guys are, right? So I say, let's just get Scott Boris in there to fix this. Let's just, let's hand the, like, if he has such power in these negotiations,

and he's such a good negotiator, obviously, he has 175 clients. Like the majority of the great baseball players in the league right now are Scott Boris clients. Let's just have him handle this. Just go in there and negotiate, get this shit done, you know, do this. Jack Donagie style from 30 Rock, put $1 down on the coffee table and start from there and then figure it out by the end of the night. Because baseball is looking worse and worse. You know what the other funny thing is baseball is looking worse, but people don't care.

I have had people just casually bring up to me like, hey, is baseball still locked out? Yeah, people don't really know. They don't know. they don't care. There is, and it's not moving the needle in any way. Like, people are just going to kind of be like, oh, hey, look at that. They canceled the baseball season. Crazy.

Anyway, flip the page of the newspaper and move on. Well, now, I guess click next on the browser is more. I'm doing a pretty 1950s imagery there with the newspaper flipping. Do you still read the newspaper, Derek? Do they still deliver the newspaper in your front phone? No, I don't. No, I just scroll on my phone while I do them scroll while I lay in bed like the rest of America. Yes, yes. Oh, man, but you know what? I'll tell you this much. It is the last,

when we talk about doom scrolling, it's the last opportunity for you to dooms scroll on your phone over to the Drafking Sportsbook app and draft and get yourself NBA, or excuse me, NFL playoff football action, right? We are this close to Super Bowl 56. It's all going to be over soon. And it has been a wonderful ride. I say that even as a Cardinals fan that actually, You could pause in the season and see where my heartbreak occurred with the Cardinals as a team. But even though they did not have a successful playoff run, I still had a lot of fun watching these playoffs. And you can too. If you're a new customer, you can get 56 to 1 odds on either team, on anything left in this conference round.

Right now, I'm taking the 49ers for some odd reason against the Rams. and that's mostly just because I feel like something wacky is still going to happen. I'm also taking the Kansas City Chiefs, but you do what you want over on the Draft King Sportsbook app. New customers can get those 56 to one odds on either team and bet just $5 to get $280 in free bets if your team wins. Download the Draft King Sportsbook app now and use our code of PHNX. Existing customers can get down on the conference championships with same game parlay as I gave you guys mine on the Draft King's pick of the week last. night, but combine multiple bets from the same game for a bigger payout, throw in those anytime touchdown scores, throw in those passing yards, whether you think they're going to pass them or

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So make sure to look for that. But Jesse, I've been thinking a lot about this, and I've been thinking about winning money on the Draft King Sportsbook app, obviously. I've been doing that. I have been having a fun time not to rub it in your face. I know you're not able to at this point. But I was thinking with all of my winnings, if I had just unlimited resources,

how I, what I would do to fix the Arizona Diamondbacks. If I just had all the money, if I was the Dodgers and I just had $300 million a year I could spend or whatever I wanted to do, I was just thinking, is there enough that you could do? do to fix the diamondbacks or is it and again i'm not i don't want to attack the podres because i know that's what it always sounds like when i say this but is it is it kind of like a podres 2021 season

where you throw all this money at the problem and things don't go your way to the point where you still don't even make the playoffs right it's a difficult division we have to play each other a lot the giants were incredible this year uh the dodgers of course are always going to be very, very good. So I just wonder what it would take for us to fix the Arizona Diamondback. So I was thinking this next week, you and I, we should take some time independently to come up with whatever outlandish crazy ideas it would take to fix this franchise. I'm going to open the door completely, right?

You have a simulation program that I know you're fond of that we could maybe use to plug some of these ideas in and see where we go with this or if we actually have some success with it, perhaps. Out of the Park Baseball is one of the most amazing. It's really a computer game at the end of the day. I used to just spend hours on Out of the Park Baseball several years ago. It's one of those games where once you start playing, it's very, very hard to stop. But anyway, yeah, no, it is a baseball simulator. And that sounds pretty fun, Derek. So we are going to, we're going to have to try this.

So if you basically decide what you want to do with this Diamondbacks team and I decide what I want to do with this Diamondbacks team, we can punch basically what we've decided into out of the park baseball on the current roster. And we can run a simulation to see what kind of madness we can cause in the 2022 season. and maybe we can go all the way with the 22 diamond backs, if given the necessary resources. So I, yeah, we'll open it up.

We'll open up to like the free agents that are currently available. Obviously, they still haven't been gobbled up. Thanks to the lockout, leaving them available on the market. And yeah, let's do it. Let's make Scott Boris some money and figure out ways that we can maybe swap some players around. I think so the question I have to ask is like,

is this like an all in for this season setup? Like, like, should I go trade Alec Thomas and Corvin Carroll and Jordan Lawler? I will slice your throat. I swear to God, I'll find you where you're, I'll find you where you sleep, Jesse. I don't even like those. Those aren't even funny suggestions. You take all of that back. Okay.

All right. All right. Well, that answers that question. So we're not mortgaging the future. We're not, we're not win at all costs in 2022. Trade all the prospects you have to happen. Yeah. You didn't inherit the team and have a terminal illness.

where you are wanting to see them win a World Series one last time before you die. It's not that situation. It's not that dramatic. But we'll say that, look, we will play the role of new owners that will be celebrated, obviously, by the Arizona Diamondbacks fan base. They will be so excited to get us in there as new young owners with fresh blood, fresh off the crypto market, where we just absolutely violated Bitcoin. And somehow are billionaires. And now we have this money to spend on this baseball team that we beloved. And people are like, why?

This is a trash franchise that you wouldn't want to invest all of this money. And you really think that you're going to make money off of this. And you and I look at each other. We're like, it's not about the money. It's about our love for this team. That's what it's about. I'm excited. This is going to be fun.

So next week at some point, maybe like midweek, we are going to present what we decided, all the moves that we did, and then what the results were. And we'll let the results. And you're going down, Derek. You're going down. We'll see. I didn't.

I don't want to put anything on the line because obviously, Jesse was wrong day. Yeah, I probably shouldn't talk myself up. It has come and gone. But I will say that I will definitely look forward to winning a champion. championship before you do. So, but I mean, you know, it's the interesting thing again will be, I think, to prove if you have this money, you know, obviously ownership is an easy target as far as you're not spending money. You're not making the team better. Of course the team didn't do good. You didn't

spend money on it. Oh, look at how bad this season was, right? 2021 was unprecedented. And there was a big part of me that there were red flags up before the season even started as far as last year goes. But the interesting thing will be to see if you were an active team still trying to make the organization better and spend money like you should, maybe something like what the Rangers are trying to do right now. Is it, I mean, is there a point to it? Is there an actual route where you can spend money on the top free agents on and have that translate over? it seems like yes, right? It seems like it would be easier said than done, perhaps, though, to just say like,

okay, well, go fill the positional needs you have right now with the best free agents right now available on the market, considering that's a possibility here. But who knows if that translates over to actual success in the season. So we're going to let us simulate. We're going to let a computer tell us, though. That's really what it comes down to. A computer will tell us who's right and who's wrong. and it will be me, of course.

But we thank you guys, of course, so much for listening to this Saturday edition of the show. If you aren't already a member at go phnx.com, what's wrong with you? What are you doing? Spend their afternoon. Go sign up over it. Get yourself an annual membership. Get yourself a free t-shirt at the PHNX Locker.com. Incredible T-shirts.

I love my cutout coyotes shirt so much. I wear it multiple times a week. But I'm also sick. So I think that means that I've been probably maybe wearing the same outfit for six, seven consecutive days. I don't know. But yeah, definitely go sign up for a membership over at go phnx.com. We are going to be bringing you all sorts of great baseball content. It's been a little slow these days.

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But if you're not interested in the annual membership option, you can sign up for the month-to-month option and you'll get your first month for just 50 cents and that's an absolute steal. You won't even, you won't even miss that 50 cents. I promise you that. And you can check out all the great content on the PHNX website, not just from us during this baseball offseason, but from all of the active sports right now. Craig Morgan keeps breaking our website. Gerald is tearing it up when it comes to Sun's news and information. And obviously, you got all sorts of additional content from all of our beats. So hopefully you guys enjoy what's going on there. And again, PHNX Locker.com.

Go over to PHNX Locker. Check out our shirts. I know you love them. I know you want one. If you aren't a member already, you can get one for free by becoming a member. If you are, you'll get all sorts of members-only discounts over.

I think right now, sun shirts are by one, get one, 20% off, I believe. I could be wrong about that, but there are definitely members-only options going all time right now. Yes, 20%, excuse me,

it's not just buy one, get one, 20% off. It's 20% off. It's 20% off all sun shirts right now, four members. So go over to PHNX Locker, get yourself a shirt, and don't forget about the sticker packs. Apparently, they're limited addition, and I don't like the idea of that because I don't want to not be able to get the DBAX sticker pack that I haven't picked up just yet. So let's make sure that those are available, at least for a little bit longer for me. And obviously, we're going to have some new PHNX deback shirts coming to the PHNX locker soon. So keep an eye out for that.

we will make a big deal about that. There's no way where you're going to, if you follow us on social media, there's no way you're going to miss that. We're going to scream from the mountaintops about our new design once they come out. So make sure you are following us on social media. I'm at cap underscore caveman with a K.

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