I’m a fan of some things and not others, for instance, I’m a big fan of smoothies. They are nutritious and they keep things moving along as they say. On the other hand, Grape Nuts, not a fan… I mean there’s crunchy and then there’s the sawdust bin at Home Depot, doesn’t matter how much milk you soak it in.
Now I’m a fan of the New York Mets. I believe the Mets should win every single frigging game, 162 – 0. Not everyone feels that way. It has occurred to me that other people may not even like the Mets… I know I know, unfathomable, but hear me out – these are often fans of other baseball teams.
Some people may be incapable of being fans at all because they are too busy with the pursuit of money and power — but this deliberation is about how sometimes these other non-Mets fans end up in positions of influence over the Mets.
Scott Boras is not a fan of the Mets, and that puts him in an awkward spot given his relationship with the ace of the Mets pitching staff. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Lets define our premise. How do we know that Boras is not a fan of the Mets?
Well, for one we are already familiar with how difficult it is for Scott Boras to be a fan of anything that does not involve … Scott Boras … But beyond his physical parameters, Scott Boras is a card carrying member of the money and power club. I don’t think you can be Scott Boras without being that.
Lets look at the context of this Matt Harvey fiasco if only to gain some perspective. Scott Boras and Sandy Alderson have had a sometimes snarky, sometimes hostile, tit-for-tat thing going on for years now. Stuff about NASA rockets, shopping in the frozen food aisle, and feeding on bargain bin cantaloupe. I don’t quite recall the sordid specifics, but it’s clear the two don’t like each other.
We need to remember that Alderson, between GM stints, was an MLB guy, while Boras is of course a Player Agent. On the Serengeti they’d be like a lion and a hyena fighting over a carcass. If it effects his bottom line Boras becomes a very unhappy camper — Boras is decidedly not a fan of things that effect his bottom line.
Here’s the kicker … Sandy Alderson’s downsized farm-leaning cheapo Mets affect Boras’ bottom line, and so … not a fan. The small-marketization of a big-city franchise poses a unique threat to a tried and true dollars paradigm — that you can succeed with less, particularly if you rely on a stocked to the rafters farm system with young controllable assets.
The scary part? Boras is kind of like the Borg. He won’t attack unless he sees you as a threat. So you can walk by him in the hallway on the way to the water cooler and he won’t even notice you with his laser eye and his robot arm. But then say there was a nickel on the floor between you and Scott-Borg and you were silly enough to try and scoop it up, you’d probably be eyeball drilled and assimilated before you could say “hey, what the …” Resistance is futile!
As Mets fans we need to understand there are some alarming developments here. Boras was fine with these new bottom-third-in-payroll Mets as long as they were also bottom dwellers, but now that they appear to be on the brink of the Playoffs suddenly they are a threat.
Why? Because baseball, is one of the most cut-throat imitative, downright theft of intellectual property (see Cards-Astros information breach) businesses out there. And if Alderson shows that you can succeed with less even in a big market … well, that’s an awful lot of pocketed cash for ownership.
That would almost be too tempting for any profit driven organization. If the Mets make it to the postseason you can bet your bottom dollar other teams will be looking at their approach, and that’s not good for Mr. Boras and his money-searching Borg-eye. His business, after all, is built on lucrative free agent contract fees.
So, while not a full blown conflict of interest, there is certainly motive here for Boras to, well, stick it to a Mets team that’s bucking his right to suckle on MLB’s free agent money teat … and with more than just a clever tweet.
This never had to go public. Boras has masterfully played the clock and the media pitting Doctors against Ownership while he sits back and claims to be doing his job just looking out for his player. Lets not forget he has a horse in this race … In “the year of the prospect” when farm hands have had a bigger impact on the game than at any other time in recent memory, you wonder whether this is this really about Matt Harvey’s arm or the long term viability of his future big free agent contract.
