Given that the average salary for a major league ballplayer is now roughly 3 million a year, do players really need an agent like Scott Boras who insists on getting every possible dime in negotiations?  Maybe a player is better off with an agent who finds a team that the player wants to play for (in a city he likes, or a team with a good chance to win, or a manager he appreciates)?

For instance, it seems that Johnny Damon would have really liked to stay with the Yankees, they did just win the World Series and he seemed to greatly enjoy his time in NY.  But Boras demanded top dollar (3 years at 13 mill per year according to reports), so the Yankees signed Nick Johnson and basically told Damon to go seek work
elsewhere.

Another example is Matt Holliday. I guess I don’t blame Boras for trying to get top dollar for Holliday, whom everyone agrees is the top free agent available this year.  But wouldn’t Matt be better off staying in St. Louis, even if he had to try and ’scrape by’ on a 6
year/96 million dollar contract, instead of demanding an 8 year/150 million dollar deal no one thinks he will get?  St. Louis is by all accounts one of the best places to play in all of baseball, with a team that virtually always is in the playoff hunt, great fans, and
Albert Pujols to take the hitting pressure off of Holliday.

If Holliday and “super-agent” Scott Boras are not careful St Louis is liable to sign Jason Bay instead, or maybe just trade for a cheaper OF alternative, and then Holliday might well end up like Adam Dunn last year – signing with a team (Washington in Dunn’s case) that has no chance at winning in the foreseeable future.

Once you get to 16 million a year, isn’t being in a great place to play more important than getting even more money?  I think Holliday can feed his family on that amount, eh?