The summer defection of agent Dan Lozano left Beverly Hills Sports Council without Albert Pujols, Joey Votto, Jimmy Rollins, Michael Young, and others. Not long after, Dan Uggla and Jayson Werth departed. However, BHSC recovered from a disappointing summer to put together a respectable winter, mainly by finding more dollars or years than expected for their relievers.
We know the new Blue Jays regime loves draft picks, and in early November they chose a $750K buyout and a pick over paying Kevin Gregg $4.5MM in 2011 or $8.75MM in 2011-12. Beverly Hills ended up getting Gregg the first multiyear deal of his career, a two-year, $10MM deal with the Orioles with a vesting option that could bring the total to $16-20MM over three years. Perhaps the Jays simply valued the sandwich pick more than whatever trade value Gregg would have had on a one-year deal, but it's also possible that they didn't expect him to do that well on the open market.
In October, I pegged Brian Fuentes for a one-year deal in the $4MM range, yet he has reportedly agreed to a two-year contract worth more than $5MM per season. I feel like this contract might have been panned had the Astros signed it, whereas with Oakland some might find ways to justify it after the fact. Regardless, it's clearly a player-friendly deal.
41-year-old lefty Arthur Rhodes received a $4.1MM guarantee from the Rangers, the best salary of his career. With good health, he'll end up getting $7.9MM over two years. In November, the Reds were unwilling to take the risk that Rhodes, a Type A free agent, would accept an offer of arbitration. Since he only earned $2MM in 2010, it's difficult to believe Rhodes would have topped $4.1MM for 2011. The implication: Rhodes is another BHSC client who got more on the open market than his old team expected in November.
Will Ohman was coming off a pair of minor league deals, but this winter he snagged a two-year, $4MM deal with the White Sox. The second guaranteed year was a win for the agency. The entire relief market has been inflated from the start this offseason, but BHSC is still brokering player-friendly deals in January.
Beverly Hills also hammered out deals for Tsuyoshi Nishioka, Octavio Dotel, and Brad Hawpe this winter. They've got unfinished business in Todd Coffey and Chad Durbin. After reaching an agreement on a $3.3MM second-year arbitration salary for Ryan Theriot, BHSC has five arbitration cases: Hunter Pence, Ryan Ludwick, Darren O'Day, Jesse Litsch, and Andy Sonnanstine.
Photo courtesy of Icon SMI.
Do agents have contractual obligations to these types of companies? Sport agencys usually begin with a group of agents pulling together their collective resources to create a positive and stable image to athletes, I imagine loseing the comission for those players must have put the BHSC in a major finacial bind. It just seems strange that being Group orientated buissness that a agent could walk away with such a large amount of clients with out some legal action.
I’m no expert but I think the agency has already seen or is still going to receive whatever money is do. How BHSC got screwed was from the new money coming in from new deals signed or coming up for Pujols (FA 2011), Rollins (FA 2011), Uggla (ext), Votto(ext) and Werth’s new deal this winter. Assuming the agency does a 50/50 split with the responsible agent, then that can add up to over $10 -$15 mil lost in new contracts and endorsements.
I forgot the name of it but for most talent agents and sports agents you sign with the agency and then you sign your own roster of talent. In most agreements, or at least ones with agents who have some sort of leverage, you can work it out where you can take the clients you sign if you are fired or leave the agency. You just have to make sure than the host agency gets all the money due them from the existing contract.
” I feel like this contract might have been panned had the Astros signed it”
Exactly! I haven’t seen what Keith Law said about it, but we all know what he would havesaid if Houston did do this deal.
I’m thinking the Jays were counting on Gregg getting more on the open market than he would have gotten in arbitration. When they picked him up last year there really wasn’t any intention of using the club options. It was strictly fill a hole and generate a draft pick.
Oakland is trying to contend and has extra money to spend that nobody will take. Houston should be committed to a rebuild and signing Fuentes would serve no purpose.
There’s me trying to justify it after the fact
I wouldn’t pan the Fuentes deal. It’s extremely difficult to find consistently solid relievers, and Fuentes has only put up one bad season out of 9 (and it came in coors). I think it’s likely he puts up 60 or so solid innings for Oakland while providing insurance in case of injury and trade bait in case of a lack of contention. Perhaps if you like to nitpick you could say he deserves only 3 or 4 mil per, but from the Oakland point of view this seems like a solid signing. That bullpen is looking scary…
Is it just me or are teams like Houston and Toronto unloading boat loads of money and not signing anybody over a million bucks?