It is impossible to start this conversation without highlighting that the agent for Cincinnati Reds superstar, Scott Boras, has spent an entire generation advising his best and brightest stars to eschew
contract offers early in their careers in pursuit of more money down the line in free agency.
We witnessed that just last winter with Juan Soto’s record-breaking contract with the New York Mets. Boras’ advice to Soto to not agree to a gigantic contract extension with the Washington Nationals – his first club – was the onus to why Soto was eventually dealt away by the Nats and the San Diego Padres, since they all knew he’d eventually be a free agent anyway. Boras has also helped usher the likes of Gerrit Cole, Bryce Harper, Corey Seager, and other tip-top players in similar ways, as those players have eventually become free agents and shaped the market in monumental ways.
Back to Elly, who appears to be the latest advisee of Boras to take that same route. As Redsfest opened on Friday in Cincinnati, Nick Krall spoke with the media about attempting to sign Elly long term, telling C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic that “we made Elly an offer that would’ve made him the highest-paid Red ever.”
“I let my agent take care of all of that,” Elly later added when prompted.
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’know, they don’t have him under contract on a record deal beyond that.
It’s a sobering realization, but it can’t 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’ll get $38, $40, maybe $45 million a year to do his thing – and that sets a bar that future free agents will demand to clear, too.
Boras gets paid more that way too, of course. It’s a built-in system for him to encourage players to bet on themselves and set themselves – and all players that come behind them – up to maximize their earning power. It’s 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.
With eyes back on the present, though, it’s hard not to think this should be infinite fuel for the Reds to push a whole lot more chips in right now. They aren’t going to have Elly as the battleship in their lineup beyond 2029, it wouldn’t 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’t come around often, and since you now know you won’t 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.
That part remains to be seen, of course. Let’s 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’s playoff push aren’t what this club considers ‘that.’
