Happy Service Time Manipulation Day Seattle Mariners Fans
Circle April 16 on your calendars Seattle Mariners fans. It will now be known as Service Time Manipulation Day.
It’s a weird day to celebrate for sure and one that the Mariners haven’t had an opportunity to celebrate since, well, never really. That’s right; your Seattle Mariners have never had the chance to celebrate Service Time Manipulation Day. Not with Ken Griffey Jr., or A-Rod, or Felix Hernandez, or any actual prospect that panned out.
Throughout the entire history of major league baseball, there have been big names who were allowed to celebrate service time manipulation. Still, no one really recognized it as a special occasion. Until Scott Boras came along.
That’s right, manipulating a player’s service time didn’t become news until 2015. It wasn’t even the player or the team doing the manipulating; it was super-agent Scott Boras.
Scott Boras vs. Theo Epstein
Picture this, you’re the #2 prospect in all the land, but the #1 prospect on a contending Chicago Cubs team that desperately needs the offensive potential of Kris Bryant. It’s March 2015, and your super mouthy, overly opinionated agent decides to press play on a strategy to get Bryant to the opening day roster of the Cubs and get shown the money.
Let me adjust that; he’s going to get paid, and been paid all along, just not from a contract that Boras negotiated. This year Kris Bryant will make $19,500,000 and then becomes a free agent, where Scott Boras can work his magic and sit on contract negotiations until March of 2022. It would’ve been 2021 though if the Cubs had listened to him and his smart mouth. I mean smart strategy, of course.
“You are damaging the ethics and brand of Major League Baseball,” Scott Boras said on March 18, 2015. That was a day after he said, “Cubs ownership has a choice… the choice is winning,” in regards to Kris Bryant. Eventually, it turned into a war of words with then Cubs President Theo Epstein.
Kris Bryant opened the 2015 season with Chicago’s AAA affiliate, Iowa, and got off to a scorching hot start (in seven games). At the end of the season, Chicago was swept by the Mets in the NLCS, and Bryant won Rookie of the Year. No harm, no foul, no money for Boras, but Bryant’s done well through the arbitration process anyway.