Bill Madden of the New York Daily News calls him the "Avenging Agent", largely because he lives vicariously through his many clients, realizing beaucoup bucks he couldn't make as a player himself due to a knee injury suffered in the minors. However, Scott Boras is and always has been a Weasel, and he proved it again this week.
Among those clients is pitcher Rafael Soriano, who on the bad advice of Boras opted out of his contract with the Yankees. Apparently, both Soriano & Boras need a refresher course on Santayana, because the last time Soriano tested the free agent market, two years ago, the Yankees were the only team willing to take a chance on him. Good thing, too, considering that their All-Star closer, Mariano Rivera, went down with a knee injury in May, and Soriano filled the void by racking up 42 saves. His overall numbers weren't exactly Rivera-level, though, but Boras, proving once again why there are some teams that don't want to deal with him, still thinks Soriano can command big bucks on the free agent market. If no one other than the Yanks wanted him 2 years ago, would anyone want him now?
Maybe. Soriano has now gone through 4 teams in his career. Before the Yankees, he was with Seattle, Atlanta, & Tampa Bay. With Boras' reputation of fleecing teams into overpaying for free agents, there's bound to be a patsy somewhere. I've often thought that Boras' primary vocation as a lawyer wasn't paying the bills, but he is the kind of guy that is all wrong for sports. Yet, the MLBPA lets him get away with it because he makes their members rich. Look up the word "greedy" in the latest Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and Boras' picture is bound to be there, as he is the very physical definition.
Boras was a minor league catcher in the Padres chain when he suffered a knee injury that ended his career. With a seemingly lucrative gig as a lawyer, why would he repeatedly snow-job teams the way he does? Because he feels he could've been making the same kind of money as a player at that position as, say for example, Ivan Rodriguez, Gary Carter, or, to use today as a template, Joe Mauer or Buster Posey. We can't say for sure about that because we don't know what his minor league stats were. His vicarious profiteering has lasted for too long, and if the MLBPA won't do something about it, MLB should step in and invoke the clause about the "best interests of baseball". I'd be willing to bet if Boras were taken to a small claims court, the ones you see on TV, mind, Judge Judy would have a field day with him.
That all being said, Scott Boras gets his 2nd pair of Weasel ears, plus a tail. It suits him.
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