Billion Dollar Day: The Wildest 24 Hours in MLB Free Agency History

FOR FOUR DAYS In early November, baseball executives were in and out of Suite 6048 at the Omni La Costa Resort and Spa. They had gathered in Carlsbad, California, for MLB’s annual managers’ meetings, and almost every organization sent at least one representative to the village to meet with Agent Scott Boras and his team of lieutenants. Executives entered Boras’s room in hopes of gauging the temperature of a more unusual free-agent period. They left wondering how much of what he said was true. Because if it were, baseball was about to have a November like they had never seen before.

The market, executives were told, could move fast, especially for Boras clients Corey seager, Marcus semien Y Max scherzer. Baseball was headed for a lockout that could shut down the sport for months, and the prevailing wisdom was that most high-level free agents would wait until a new deal was signed. Boras was turning that wisdom upside down, and that notion divided those who left room 6048. Some rolled their eyes and thought Boras was making a pose. Others rolled up their sleeves and believed they had three weeks to remake the entire baseball landscape.

If Boras was telling the truth, if Seager, Semien, and Scherzer were actually going to act before the collective agreement expired at 11:59 p.m. on December 1, they wouldn’t be the only ones. The entire industry would ripple in response. Other players who had not intended to sign prior to the lockout would. The domino effect could be exponential.

Despite all the skepticism, Boras had done this before. Two years ago, he told teams that his three precious clients: Stephen strasburg, Gerrit cole Y Anthony Rendon, they were scheduled to sign during the 2019 winter meetings. Over a 72-hour period, they received a total of $ 814 million guaranteed. It revitalized, for a short time at least, a baseball offseason that in recent years had turned into a painful and tiring boredom. It turned out that it was also simply a prelude to what 2021 would offer.

About three weeks after those meetings in Carlsbad, around 4 p.m. ET on November 28, the lucrative and unpredictable game-changing day started. Five players, including Boras’ top three clients, would sign deals guaranteeing them more than $ 100 million, and another would break the nine-figure threshold in the middle of the following night. In just 24 hours, the teams squandered nearly $ 1 billion on seven players.

In hindsight, the frenzy makes some sort of sense, according to more than 20 industry sources who spoke to ESPN to offer the clearest picture of how the game’s billion-dollar day came together. It was the perfect confluence, they said, of top talent, urgency created by an artificial deadline, unusual aggressiveness from teams not playing in the playoffs, and the paradoxical reality that a labor struggle for money spurred a never-before-seen distribution of wealth. view.

This is the story of the wildest 24 hours in baseball free agency history.

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Billion Dollar Day: The Wildest 24 Hours in MLB Free Agency History