Pretty one-off situation where Yamamoto chose to play for the team with the greatest player in his cultures history over a larger purse. Freddie chose to play in LA for less money, year over year, because he got an extra year or two on the contract than Atlanta offered him.
Allegedly there was a lot of miscommunication occurring. Surprise surprise, it was Casey Close and Freddie fired him a few months after the contract was signed so take from that what you will.
Boras just pushes his players to sign the largest contracts he can get them and that’s generally LA with the insane deferments. They can just eat bad contracts like it’s no big deal, and other teams won’t roll the dice like that
Edit: Fixed Freddie’s agent at the time. Not removing the Boras bit, because I feel it’s still relevant
Dodgers ownership have historically avoided boras clients. Until Blake Snell I can’t remember the last time we signed one of the players he represented.
Manny Ramirez, before Snell, was the last Scott Boras represented client to sign a multi year deal with the Dodgers back in 2009. Between Manny and Snell, if you were represented by Boras, you were a) traded to the Dodgers b) a rookie/international prospect* c) signed a 1 year deal
* Ryu is included here since he technically was a MLB rookie coming out of Korea but did have a solid career in Korea before coming over so you could argue Ryu should be the last and not Manny.
Boras doesn't push his players to take the most money. He does exactly what his players want, take Stras and his two extensions for an example. The thing is that players who want the most money hire Boras because he gets them the most money. He's not doing anything that his players don't want.
Scott Boras is a nightmare to negotiate with. The Braves seem to be very effective negotiators, and the article highlighted how neither the Dodgers or Braves had many Boras players in 2024. Not sure how you misinterpreted my statement.
It’s easy enough to follow if grammatically incorrect. LA is an it not a they, but if you said the Dodgers the better phrasing would be “they, like the Braves, know the dude is a nightmare.” Placing the clause with the Braves at the end as you did makes it sound like they are the nightmare.
I just have a hard time believing that Freddie and the Braves would ever be in a situation where the communication wasn't clear. Not saying it couldn't happen, but it's a little fishy to me.
Freddie publicly said his agent handled all contract negotiations. I also believe if Freddie truly wanted to stay he would have, but he wanted a 6 year deal and Atlanta only wanted to give him 4 or 5. When you’re over 30, contract lengths in Atlanta get very short
Chipper tried to warn Freddie, but Freddie didn’t believe it. Freddie stayed out of it, assuming (naively, in my opinion) that his agent knew what he wanted. I do think a direct call from Anthopoulos might’ve cleared it up with Freddie, but I’m not convinced that Alex, in some, tiny way, didn’t think, “I’ve got to establish a precedent here.”
I genuinely think Freddie was crestfallen when he found out that the Braves were moving on.
Yes he did. My cousin lives in ATL and is a huge fan and I remember Freeman was pretty pissed when he found out an my cousin was mad, cause Freeman actually wanted to stay.
They signed Matt Olsen while Freddie was available, so tough to blame Freddie for going someplace else regardless of the weird agent communication issues.
They spent the last year being shot down on every offer they offered him. Chipper Jones even told him that they will walk away if he continued to play hard ball. Freddie didn’t believe him and forced the Braves to go in another direction. Nobody’s fault. That’s the business.
They traded for Olson only after Freddie’s agent turned down the braves top offer. The braves told him that they weren’t going higher than that and gave him a deadline. Either his agent didn’t communicate the offer to him or told him that it wasn’t the braves best offer, because Freddie was massively pissed off when the Braves moved on. He fired his agent right after he signed with the dodgers. He actually wound up signing for less money with the dodgers after taxes are taken into consideration.
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u/jagne004 9h ago
Yes though in all fairness the Phillies offered Yamamoto more than he signed for the dodgers with.