If it was really in the plain terms of the contract, there would be no dispute. There’s an issue here because Boras is very good at contract law. The people on this site are illiterate by comparison.

The point is that an oral agreement was reached and terms sent over. No contract was signed, and Boras is exploiting some sort of clause in the contractual language.

There’s just no way a rudimentary understanding of how the draft deadline works qualifies you to talk about the merits of Boras’s case. He’s a contract lawyer, and a damned good one, and he’s made a compelling enough case that it’s going to arbitration. This is going to come down to very boring legal interpretations of contractual clauses in a binding legal document none of us has read. You don’t go to arbitration if there’s no reasonable supporting claim behind one party’s assertion. The legal system is smarter than that.

is that Alvarez agreed to the deal at the last minute, then later realized that Hosmer got the exact same offer. With time to think about it, he probably thought he got ripped off a bit since he was drafted earlier and is much more advanced. Now him and Boras are trying to go back on their word to get more money.

for holding out for bonus money now, instead of thinking about how that could cost you in FA/Arb.

You never know if you are going to make it, so that extra 1 mil could go along way towards having enough money to be set for a very early and comfortable retirement if you suck, wash out or get hurt and don’t have a baseball career of much.

The FA and arb money is the money that is kind of “gravy,” money that will allow you to live in luxury now and for the future

under your logic if the future is so much better than the present.

At some point you have to win, and it is ALWAYS better to win now than next year.. why would you want to dawdle ?

“The real key here, though, is that there’s a threshold effect for what players are worth. Taking a team to the playoffs is worth a lot more than not doing so. So you want to concentrate your talent in a certain time frame.”

And what time frame would that be? Who has the predictive powers to know when precisely a team’s talent will be concentrated enough? I can tell you that the Pirates next year won’t be making the playoffs, and I can even tell you that in 5 years the As will probably be stronger than they are next year. I have no idea, though, whether they’re be stronger in 2012 or in 2013, or whether they’ll be a championship-caliber team or simply above average. I can tell you that next year the Rays will be good, but I have no idea whether they can win the World Series without adding a veteran or not. You’re talking like a mixture of a baseball historian and a baseball prophet, who can see precisely when a team is just a game or two beneath making the playoffs or the World Series and that year, will add the crucial player. Your team may always have a reserve 1B for Bill Buckner and a lefty specialist to handle Reggie Jackson, but that team will also only be imaginary. In the real world, people don’t know, they guess, they imagine, they make mistakes. You can’t plot your team to just make the playoffs by one game, because there isn’t that much of an advantage to winning your division by 7, so you might as well trade the extra 6 games for more revenues or another prospect. (I know you’re going to love this but) you’re dealing with human beings, not computers. (And yes, I’m fully aware of the importance of advanced statistics, but also aware that them dealing with human beings, there is a margin of error built into them. That error is my point)

As to what was apparently your original point, that oftentimes it’s better to get a prospect rather than a veteran, to get a player for later rather than now, you are, of course, right.