If you have never been to a yearling auction, the parallels to agent Scott Boras parading his players is eerily similar, except the venue doesn’t smell like horse manure, just plenty of vibes of bullsh##. The man is a master of sales and the art of manipulation, that often calls his tactics into question. In the case of Ethan Holliday, the presumptive №1 pick in the draft that is just two weeks away, he has bloodlines like you announce at a thoroughbred auction because that is a key factor in the breeding process.
Not all sons of great Major League players become baseball stars. For every Ken Griffey Jr., you might have a Mariano Rivera Jr. But having the last name of Ripken sure doesn’t hurt if you decide to be in the periphery of baseball for your career like Ryan Ripken, son of Cal Ripken Jr. who now interviews players like Griffey for his podcast. It is a player like Cal who far exceeded what his father ever did as a pro player. The Nats love to sign nepo kids as they had drafted both Rivera and Ripken, and have players like Marquis Grissom Jr. getting close to the Majors.
American Pharoah and Justify are the only living Triple Crown winners. A stud fee for Justify is $250,000 and some of his ‘children’ have sold for over $1.1 million. That is nothing compared to Matt Holliday. His oldest son, Jackson Holliday, signed with the Baltimore Orioles after being selected as the first overall pick in the MLB draft in 2022. He got $8.19 million signing bonus as a high school player. If Ethan is selected at the top of this year’s draft, he will almost certainly eclipse $9 million as the slot value is $11.079 million for the Nats’ pick.
For the Holliday family, baseball is in their bloodlines. Dad was a seven-time All-Star outfielder with the Colorado Rockies and St. Louis Cardinals and a thorn in the side of the Nationals throughout his career when he first tormented the Expos in 2004, a year before they relocated in Washington, D.C. In the elder Holliday’s career, he slashed .332/.422/.566 for a career OPS of .988 in a rather large sample size against the Expos/Nationals and .971 just in Nationals Park.
Last night was the perfect setting for Boras because this was the only game being played last last night in that time slot, and the two teams playing, Nationals and Angels, respectively have the first two picks in the draft on July 13. On display for the MASN and FDSNW cameras was Boras, and Ethan and Matt Holliday.
For the elder Holliday, his first agent was Thomas Jot Hartley who was a local attorney from Tulsa, Oklahoma near where Holliday grew up in Stillwater, the place he and his children were raised. But Holliday dropped Hartley for greener pastures and made Boras his agent too. Like father like sons.
For Washington Nationals fans, the only solace here might be in the fact that Boras will turn 73 years old in November. You can do the math, Holliday might not get his first year of MLB service time until 2027 when he is 20 years old. That would put him the earliest into free agency after the 2032 season, and Boras would be exactly 80 years old.
Will Boras still be viable in the next decade as an agent? Would you really want his son, Shane, as your agent at that point in time? Shane Boras is a nice kid from what we have heard — but those who know him, have told us that he might not be able to keep all of the players that his father brought to the agency. Scott Boras might be the king, but players have left Boras like Keibert Ruiz and Luis Garcia Jr. In recent years, Boras broke the bank with Juan Soto, but didn’t meet the projections on some of his other players. Some think the agent’s best days are behind him and players like Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge as well as other superstar players have signed with other agents.
One prominent example of a player who left Boras recently is Jordan Montgomery. He publicly criticized Boras for the handling of his free agency experience, which saw him sign a deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks well below initial expectations. Montgomery felt that Boras “kind of butchered” the process.
While Boras keeps the negative press to a minimum, he has said his job is to represent his clients’ interests, even if it means weathering public criticism. Some say that the current draft system with slot values and spending caps was changed to thwart Boras who broke the bank on both Stephen Strasburg ($15.1 million) and Bryce Harper ($9.9 million) in consecutive years, setting signing bonus records. No drafted player has ever reached Strasburg’s level of a signing bonus and that was 16 years ago. In 2025 dollars $22.65 million
On top of that, Boras has been accused of having the national “media” in his back pocket, and that has kept him from being the target of media negativity. The Boras playbook has led to descriptions ranging from “baseball’s most hated man” and “baseball’s answer to Lord Voldemort” to the man “players can’t afford to live without.”
There are no refunds with Boras. No do-overs once the contract is signed. The Nationals signed Strasburg to a record $245 million extension that became the worst contract in baseball history as the right-hander was injured for most of the contract and retired last year while reportedly getting paid every last dime of that deal. Strasburg would pitch a total of 8-partial games and a 6.89 ERA in total under that 7-year contract. The Nationals are still paying on that contract.
Some fans, just like some team owners, will avoid Boras and his players. The Atlanta Braves boasted that they won a World Series with no Boras star players on their roster. But if you believe in getting the best players, it is almost unavoidable that you don’t end up with Boras players. The Nats drafted Dylan Crews in 2022, a Boras client, and James Wood and MacKenzie Gore are also Boras clients acquired through that historic Soto trade. Nats fans know all to well that Boras players generally wait for free agency like Soto who turned down a $440 million offer from the Nationals in 2022 that had no deferrals, and wasn’t even countered at that point, as the Nats reportedly would have gone even higher if Boras was really open to an extension.
If this feels like a “been there, done that” moment, is because that is the case. This is the norm for Nationals’ fans, and there is no reason to believe that when general manager Mike Rizzo calls the name of their first pick in two weeks — that it won’t be a Boras client.
There you go, not only does Boras have Holliday, we just reported that the other rumored player the Nats are interested in, LHP Kade Anderson, from the College World Series champion LSU Tigers, is also being advised by Boras. But Anderson was not with Boras last night. Why not?
Most believe that Holliday and Anderson in some order will be going to the Nationals and Angels.
