Scott Boras is on FIRE

Scott Boras, still trying to convince the Cubs to keep Kris Bryant up with the big club, thereby ensuring that he hits free agency one year sooner, spoke with Jon Heyman today. And, while he has no actual power to keep the Cubs from demoting his client, he still has his precious and often amazing rhetoric:

“The opiate of player control cannot supersede the greater importance of MLB’s integrity and brand, which says that this is where the best players play. You can’t have that . . . Clearly, there’s an obligation to put the best players in the big leagues.”

That’s the first time the word “opiate” has been used in a non-drug context or a non-riffing-on-Karl Marx context in a good 85 years. Maybe more.

But he’s not just being high-falutin’ here. He’s going for zingers too!

“They haven’t won for 100 years, and they should start trying to win today,” Boras said. “Cubs fans are paying the third-highest ticket prices. They are paying for the team to win today. They don’t pay to see the club do business.”

I’d say that Cubs fans have, actually, bought pretty fully into the idea of rebuilding a team for long-term contention, not just to “win today.” And having one more year of a potential superstar Kris Bryant at age 29 than two extra weeks of zero major league experience Kris Bryant to start off this season is a tradeoff most of them are quite happy with. Or does Boras not realize that, generally speaking, fans do not much care for free agency and really, really hate it when superstars leave town?

Whatever. Boras is gonna Boras. And he’ll be on this “help the Cubs win, keep Bryant up!” stuff unless and until Bryant struggles to adjust to big league life and is actually harming the Cubs. In which case I’m sure his focus will then turn to making sure Bryant stays up in the bigs, even if he’s hurting the Cubs because, hey, you can’t harm a kids’ psyche like that.