Dodgers Team News

Dodgers News: Agent Scott Boras Says LA Misjudged the Market for Cody Bellinger

Back in November, the Dodgers faced a difficult decision: pay center-fielder Cody Bellinger $18-20 million for the 2023 season, or non-tender him and make him a free agent. In the end, Los Angeles decided to non-tender him, although they hoped to re-sign him at a salary closer to the value they expected him to provide.

The free-agent market had other ideas, though, and Bellinger ended up getting from the Cubs almost exactly what he would have gotten in arbitration if LA had kept him around. According to Jorge Castillo in the Los Angeles Times, Bellinger’s agent, the notorious Scott Boras, never expected the Dodgers to non-tender Belli.

“The truth of it is until he was non-tendered, I really did not really have a lot of conversations with the Dodgers because I felt it was rather a matter of fact that he would continue with them because they had rights over him,” Scott Boras, Bellinger’s agent, said last week. “I had no idea that they would non-tender him.”

Once the Los Angeles front office made the decision to make Bellinger a free agent, Boras says they were quickly priced out of a market they had misjudged.

Boras said 11 teams contacted him regarding Bellinger the day he was let go. Bellinger eventually agreed on a one-year contract worth $17.5 million guaranteed with the Cubs during the winter meetings. …

“The marketplace was very different as to what the Dodgers thought Cody’s value was,” Boras said.

The Dodgers probably knew it was a possibility they’d be outbid for Bellinger; they have a tendency to not worry much about the “marketplace” for players, instead opting to decide how much they want to pay a player and for how long and then pivoting if he’s not available on those terms.

One thing that might have been different would be if LA had understood Belli’s market, they might have tendered him and then looked to make a trade, although they did attempt to trade him before making the decision. Either way, it seems unlikely they were ever going to pay Cody what the Cubs are paying him in 2023.

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Jeff Snider

Jeff was born into a Dodgers family in Southern California and is now raising a Dodgers family of his own in Utah. During his previous career as an executive at a technology company, he began writing about baseball in his spare time. After leaving corporate America in 2014, he started doing it professionally. Jeff wrote and edited for Baseball Essential for years before joining Dodgers Nation. He's also the co-host of the Locked On Dodgers podcast, a daily podcast that brings the smart fan's perspective on our Boys in Blue. Jeff has a degree in English from Brigham Young University. Favorite Player: Clayton Kershaw Favorite Moment: Kirk Gibson's homer will always have a place, but Kershaw's homer on Opening Day 2013 might be the winner.

6 Comments

  1. Gee, Cody batted .210 last year. I think the Dodgers knew what they were doing. Maybe leaving the club will wake him up

  2. Boras, you are so full of it. Stop ruining the game with your greed. You know Cody isn’t going to be any better than the last few years.

  3. Who cares what Bore-ass thinks. He’s just another lawyer looking to make max dollars on anything or anyone he represents.

  4. So how did they mishandle it if they didn’t want to pay him almost exactly what the qualifying offer was (17m) from what he got from the cubs (17.5)?

  5. Do we really care what Scott Boras says or thinks here? His job is to put his clients in the best possible light for the best possible payday. If you listened to him long enough, he’d probably try to convince you that a return to MVP form is a certainty.

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