Scott Boras, Mark Attanasio and the Brewers' Rebuild

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Photo Credit: Cathy T (Flickr CC)

MLB agent Scott Boras

The Brewers’ rebuild seemingly turned a corner in 2017, leaving the organization in a position to be a trendy sleeper pick for the playoffs next season and a likely candidate to attempt to make a splash this winter with trades or free agent signings. The nature of those attempts, if they occur, may give fans some insight into the power structure within the team’s front office.

When the Brewers hired David Stearns to take over as general manager in 2015, Stearns told David Laurila of FanGraphs that owner Mark Attanasio had given him “complete autonomy” to execute his vision for the Brewers’ rebuild. Since that time there haven’t been many public mentions of Attanasio’s involvement in player acquisition, which was a significant change from the previous years under Doug Melvin.

During the late years of Melvin’s time as GM there were several cases where high profile decisions and expenditures were seemingly decided upon in the owner’s office. In 2014 Attanasio told Ken Rosenthal that there had been “31 or 33 phone calls” between himself and Scott Boras before the Brewers signed Boras client Kyle Lohse in spring training of 2013.

In that same interview Attanasio also told the story of how the Brewers’ pursuit of Matt Garza started with conversations at Ryan Braun’s wedding between himself, Garza and Braun’s agent Nez Balelo and then-Brewers manager Ron Roenicke.

The Boras-Attanasio direct connection resurfaced in 2015 when the Brewers brought back Francisco Rodriguez, another Boras client, on a two-year contract for his fourth stint in Milwaukee. The total guaranteed value of the three aforementioned contracts was $96 million and the trio combined to receive about 25% of the team’s payroll in 2015, when the Brewers went 68-94 despite a franchise-record Opening Day payroll of $104.2 million. Of the three deals, K-Rod’s contract was the only one the Brewers were eventually able to trade away: They sent him to the Tigers in a deal that brought Manny Pina to Milwaukee.

Since the Brewers went “all-in” on the rebuild in 2015 the team has been relatively quiet in free agency, following David Stearns’ rebuilding plan to accumulate young, controllable talent instead of seeking quick fixes in the market. Kyle Lesniewski of Brew Crew Ball spotted a seemingly notable shift in the Brewers’ tendencies last winter when the Brewers did not actively pursue catcher Matt Wieters, another Boras client seeking a big deal who remained unsigned well into the offseason. At that point, however, the Brewers were coming off of a 73-89 2016 season and weren’t believed to be on the verge of contention.

This winter the situation is a little different: The Brewers are coming off of a surprise run at the postseason in 2017 and won 86 games for just the third time in the last 25 years. And, as luck would have it, there’s another Boras client on the free agent market that could seek to tempt Mark Attanasio’s competitive tendencies.

Jake Arrieta has been one of the best pitchers in the National League since joining the Cubs in 2014. He was the league’s Cy Young Award winner in 2015, when he posted a sub-2 ERA for a Chicago team that burst out of their rebuild with 97 wins and an NLCS appearance. He also pitched almost 250 innings that season and, in a potentially related note, both his performance and his fastball velocity have tailed off since. Arrieta routinely threw in the mid-90’s during his spectacular 2015 season, as compared to a 92.1 mph average fastball in 2017.

Despite his declining velocity and increasing age (Arrieta turns 32 in March) MLB Trade Rumors ranked him as this winter’s fourth-best free agent and predicted he’ll “come out looking for a six-year deal,” but the Brewers would sign him to a four-year, $100 million contract that would still almost double Garza’s record for the largest pitcher contract in franchise history.

Somewhere out there a team is getting ready to write Arrieta a very large check. Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs recently made it clear what he thinks of that risk and how it will happen, saying, “Arrieta is a Boras guy. He’ll go over the top of some front office to sell a know-nothing owner on Arrieta’s proven track record of big-game pitching.”

Scott Boras has become an infamous MLB agent at least in part because he’s very good at finding a team willing to pay or exceed top dollar for his clients. In recent years, that process has included making a lot of calls to Mark Attanasio’s office. It’s almost certainly safe to assume he’ll try that route again this winter, and it will be interesting to see how the Brewers respond.