On August 6 of last season, Luis Garcia Jr. captured the lead in WAR (Wins Above Replacement) for position players on the Washington Nationals roster. That was a positive impact from Garcia who was demoted a year before in that same week when he was sent to Triple-A Rochester — and was not a lock to make the Nats’ Opening Day roster in 2024. Not only did Garcia come into training camp in great shape, his defense was markedly improved and rated third best on the team.
We broke the news this week that Garcia had changed agents once again, and left the Boras Agency for the MAS+ Agency with Francis Marquez as his agent per our sources.
When reports surfaced in 2023 that Garcia, along with teammate Keibert Ruiz, defected from the Boras Agency to join the Octagon Agency and agent Gustavo Marcano, to try to sign long-term deals, Ruiz was able to get a deal completed with the Nationals — but Garcia did not get a new contract — and reports surfaced that Garcia returned to the Boras Agency. Now Garcia is with MAS+ and this had us reaching out to sources who have told us that Garcia will be looking for a long-term deal with the Nationals.
Garcia just agreed to a $4.5 million contract in his second year of arbitration eligibility, and he will have two more years of team-control beyond this 2025 season before he would be able to head to free agency.
With Garcia’s improvement in the 2024 season, with above average defense and posting a .762 OPS, the best of his career, he should try to parlay this into a long-term deal if they can come to terms with the Nationals.
After Garcia’s departure from Boras, it just leaves Dylan Crews, MacKenzie Gore, and James Wood as the only 40-man players reportedly as Boras clients. Maybe there are others, maybe not. Boras does not publicly post his list of clients. We know he has Cristhian Vaquero in the minor leagues, but recently the Nats have signed players from other agencies. That wasn’t always the case.
In fact in 2018, the Washington Nationals roster had 60 percent of their starting pitchers with Boras that included Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Gio Gonzalez. Boras represented 100 percent of the Nats starting outfield at one time with Jayson Werth, Michael Taylor, and Bryce Harper along with backup Brian Goodwin who was another of the Nats former first round picks. On the infield, he had 50 percent of the players from that 2016 team with Anthony Rendon and Danny Espinosa. If one player left, it seemed like another moved in like catcher Matt Wieters.
Like him or not, there has never been a sports agent who has transcended the modern game more than Boras. The Nats and Boras have been tied together since the day the team signed Strasburg in 2009 to the largest draft contract in history. It has been one of those relationships that feels like a whole lot of taking by the agent and giving by the team in a one-sided relationship with favors given along the way by the Nats.
If Boras needed a favor, he had a direct line to the patriarch of the Lerner ownership group in Ted Lerner when he was alive. There was that time the Nats signed Boras’ client Rafael Soriano to the largest free agent deal ever for a closer. Sure, the Nats needed bullpen help at the time, but there were better and cheaper fits for the Nats when Soriano remained unsigned into late January of 2013. Not only did it appear to be an overpay when the Nats signed Soriano, the Nats also had to forfeit their first round pick in that 2014 draft as a penalty for signing Soriano.
The mind-boggling signing of Wieters deep into spring training of 2017 was another head-scratcher. He arrived injured, and was a complete bust for the team considering his combined Fangraphs WAR over his two seasons with the team was a -0.8. The Nats paid him $21 million at the same time they were above the CBT payroll cap.
There were certainly harsh criticisms that Boras was effectively running the Nationals which prompted a Washington Post article titled “Does Scott Boras run the Nationals?” The answer clearly was ‘no’ but he wielded a lot of influence, and mostly because he was an agent at one time for six of the Nats top seven players.
“We represent a lot of high draft picks, and we have three or four of them here. Now, those high draft picks are very talented. They develop a core, and now they start seeking our free agents. So you get this period of time where you have a culmination of draft and free agency, and then it creates a volume of players on the team.”
— Boras said back in 2015
While the Nats seemingly appeared to be bending over backwards at every turn for Boras, the team also took hits in bad press. When things didn’t go Boras’s way with the Nats, it seemed to get aired out like dirty laundry in the press. Boras has done nothing to stick up for the team when bad press hits about his clients — and you have to wonder who leaked the news. Some of it seems like ‘spin’ to justify leaving.
The way Harper left for free agency with news leaking about lengthy deferrals that embarrassed the Nats was not a good look once the media ran with that story. What the Nats offered or didn’t offer was another case of a public relations nightmare as it was handled poorly. Then the following year after winning the World Series, it was Rendon who walked for a mega contract and news leaked that Rendon was not happy with the chartered jet service during the postseason. What? Then of course at the end of the 2023 season it was Strasburg’s negotiated retirement that became tabloid fodder, and the Nats were barbecued for a sundry list of what the media wrote about as bad faith negotiating by the Nationals. All of this with agent Scott Boras staying silent.
Of course the Nats signed Strasburg to the largest free agent pitching contract at the time for a right-handed pitcher and that contract, let’s just say, might have been the worst contract in baseball history at $245 million for all of 8-games played in total by Strasburg. And by the way, there are no refunds when a contract goes that bad.
“Everyone in DC knows special cherry trees create revenue bloom to get it done.”
— Boras said when trying to convince everyone that the Nats had enough money to sign both Strasburg and Rendon
Can you imagine if the Nats had signed both Strasburg and Rendon? Both contracts turned out to be terrible, and fortunately for the Nationals, the Angels were the team that got hosed on the Rendon deal.
If it seemed like every Boras client’s contract was there to squeeze the last nickel out of ownership, it certainly felt that way. The media just added fuel to the fire. Some would say that is an agent’s job to get the player the most money they can get. But we’ve seen many cases with other agents where that has not been the case. But first and foremost, an agent’s job is to represent their client in the player’s best interest. In 2023, Soto appeared on the Padres radio via Audacy and said:
“I just let my agent do work with it. I’m here to play baseball. I’m just going to keep playing baseball. I let Scott (Boras) to do all the business part and he will let me know what’s gonna be the best (option).”
Well, it usually, but not always works out great for the Boras clients, and Soto did indeed break the bank. He will be closer than any US athlete to making $1 billion in his career. As Boras turned 72 last year, he has to be looking to a succession plan as to his future as Father Time is undefeated. How much longer can Boras keep doing this? The elder Boras has reportedly been grooming his son Shane to take over, but will players want Shane Boras negotiating their next deals? Could you see Shane circumventing a general manager to call straight to a team owner like his father was known to do?
“Obviously, Scott Boras goes to ownership for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks: Because that’s where the money is,” Peter Schmuck once wrote.
Now Boras does say nice things when you pay record money for his players. In 2015, the Nationals signed Max Scherzer to a record deal at the time.
“Ted Lerner went out and signed Max Scherzer,” Boras said, “and gave him a record contract, record years, and he was annihilated for it! They told him that was a mistake. That was an overpay!”
Nice words at the time from Boras, but also a rare moment. Yes, it takes two to tango. Love him, hate him, the relationship with Boras yielded Scherzer. Sure, the Nats paid the biggest bucks for him, but that might be one of the best free agent deals in history, and unfortunately Strasburg as the worst. You probably want to keep a good relationship with Boras because you never know. You can try to be a team like the Atlanta Braves and typically not draft or trade for Boras clients. But Boras has some of the best players.
Now with Boras representing fewer players on the team, and CJ Abrams with Roc Nation and Ruiz with Octagon, is it time for general manager Mike Rizzo to pounce on a Braves’ type of team friendly long-term deals. This could be an ongoing discussion. The Nats only have one long-term contract with Ruiz. We will see if Garcia gets that contract extension and if the Nats extend their window by trying to do lengthy contract extensions for the Boras’ clients of Crews, Gore, and Wood.
By not pushing hard this offseason to come out of this rebuild, you have to look at the core players and how long they will be within team-control to extend the window. Garcia and Gore have the least time remaining of team-control with just two years beyond this season. But some would say the Nationals should move Abrams to second base, and find a long-term solution at shortstop. Abrams has three years of team-control beyond this season. These are decisions for Rizzo and the Lerner ownership group to make.
We will see if this year is the time for contract extensions. Part of this is being proactive by the team, and part of this is taking on the associated risk in long-term deals. For the players, they have to see the value in betting on their futures. With the next CBA coming up, and talks of hard salary caps, this could be a time that players might want to get long-term deals locked up. Garcia could be the next clue on this, and don’t expect anything to happen until Spring Training.
