Ryan Madson “Deal” to Include $44 Million, Scott Boras Snickering

If you thought that Ryan Madson’s contract negotiations were a gathering of friends dedication to gradually moving the process forward, you obviously forgot that Scott Boras was involved.  Also involved are 44 million of the Phillies’ dollars over the next four years.  Which is why Scott Boras is doing all that snickering.  And why the Phillies are smiling and waving at Jonathan Papelbon.

Yes, all those rumors you heard about this going swimmingly may have been a tad premature.  Its probably a little tough to lock in a deal with Boras screaming “CHANGE PLACES!!!” every five minutes.  But signing off on $11 million a year for a closer can grate the nerves a bit as well.  

Nobody is glancing back and forth between the books and the players they want to sign more rapidly than the Phillies.  They’ve got all that money tied up in a small amount of players, according to every single article I’ve read on the internet.  Without a deal for Jimmy Rollins yet, they want to be careful about not overpaying for a closer, or at least not looking Boras directly in his eyes when they start doing that weird spiral thing like the snake from The Jungle Book.

But wait!  There’s some exciting news to discuss about baseball’s Collective Bargaining Agreement!  Which I can explain without actually understanding what any of it means.  Basically, teams don’t want to sign free agents without a CBA, and baseball doesn’t have a new one yet.  Probably next week some time, they will.  Or maybe they won’t.  These things are impossible to predict.

Which is why everybody’s so skiddish, because obviously if the Phillies wait too long, that homeless guy in the Nationals cap rifling through the trash outside Citizens Bank Park will offer Ryan some insane deal and continue Washington’s assembly of some future team of scrappy underdogs that just makes you want to barf.

“The Phillies gave up on them!” they’ll claim about Ryan and Jayson; and Ruben Amaro, grizzled and old, will angrily chew his cigar from an enormous easy chair in a dark room lit only by a roaring fire.  Why has aged several decades in such a short time is no mystery.  Regret can do that to a man.  Ruben will look over at the portrait of Jonathan Papelbon he had commissioned just prior to the 2012 season, and remember how he’d amassed one of the least effective and most expensive seasons in team history.

Meanwhile, Scott Boras will be dead, buried in a sarcophagus made out of crystallized dollars, a sickening grin forever rigor mortis’d on his face.

MY GOD WE HAVE TO SIGN RYAN MADSON RIGHT NOW