telling C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic<\/a> that \u201cwe made Elly an offer that would\u2019ve made him the highest-paid Red ever.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cI let my agent take care of all of that,\u201d Elly later added when prompted.<\/p>\n
2026. 2027. 2028. 2029. Those are now the seasons that the Cincinnati Reds will have Elly under team control, with the obvious caveat there being when they seriously begin to consider dealing him for a franchise-altering return since, y\u2019know, they don\u2019t have him under contract on a record deal beyond that.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a sobering realization, but it can\u2019t be considered at all surprising. This is simply what Boras does with his star clients, and the end result has pumped tens, hundreds of additional millions into the game for players all over. If Elly accepted, say, a contract that guaranteed him $28, $30 million through 2035 to remain a Red, that would certainly set him and his family up for the rest of his life. But if he balked at that, continued to do his thing until free agency, and then let all 30 teams bid on his services at that juncture? He\u2019ll get $38, $40, maybe $45 million a year to do his thing \u2013 and that sets a bar that future free agents will demand to clear, too.<\/p>\n
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Boras gets paid more that way too, of course. It\u2019s a built-in system for him to encourage players to bet on themselves and set themselves \u2013 and all players that come behind them \u2013 up to maximize their earning power. It\u2019s really hard to blame him for that idea, either, even if this time it may come at the expense of getting to watch the most electric player the Reds have had in a generation(s) wear a different jersey at some point in the not-too-distant future.<\/p>\n
With eyes back on the present, though, it\u2019s hard not to think this should be infinite fuel for the Reds to push a whole lot more chips in right now. They aren\u2019t going to have Elly as the battleship in their lineup beyond 2029, it wouldn\u2019t seem, a timeline that conveniently lines up with that of ace Hunter Greene (who, for the sake of highlighting nuance here, will be a Red until that point because he signed an early contract extension). Those two kinds of stars simply don\u2019t come around often, and since you now know you won\u2019t have hundreds of millions committed to them long-term, perhaps you roll some of that money into supporting those two with better players while you do have them.<\/p>\n
That part remains to be seen, of course. Let\u2019s just hope the abdication of effort by the front office at the 2023 trade deadline and the lackluster additions they brought in during last year\u2019s playoff push aren\u2019t what this club considers \u2018that.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is impossible to start this conversation without highlighting that the agent for Cincinnati Reds superstar, Scott Boras,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":523209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[232705,24336,5048,42421,3382,10614,31301,20726,46398,3693,1266,1305,1306,54307,62,67,132,68,1291],"class_list":{"0":"post-523208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-brightest-stars","9":"tag-bryce-harper","10":"tag-cincinnati-reds","11":"tag-contract-extension","12":"tag-corey-seager","13":"tag-elly","14":"tag-free-agent","15":"tag-free-agents","16":"tag-gerrit-cole","17":"tag-juan-soto","18":"tag-mlb","19":"tag-new-york-mets","20":"tag-san-diego-padres","21":"tag-scott-boras","22":"tag-sports","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-washington-nationals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115911509910644873","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}