May
08

The Hendricks Strategy

By | Contract Negotiation, MLB Players, Sports Agents

5 Comments

Unless you could absolutely care less about anything that has to do with baseball and happened to throw away your newspaper’s sports page while avoiding your local news channel’s sports segment, you are aware that Roger Clemens has agreed to a $28 million contract this year, which will actually pay him $18 million for the shortened season that he will play.

Instead of arguing about whether or not Clemens deserves the large amount of money (I’ll let Darren Rovell handle that), whether it is good or bad for the sport, or whether the Yankees truly are an evil empire, I would like to focus on the new type of negotiation technique that Clemens’ agent has employed. Clemens is represented by Randy Hendricks, of Hendricks Sports Management.

This is how Sports Law Blog describes the strategy employed by Hendricks:

Wait until May or June (or whenever large market teams become unexpectedly desperate for pitching), create a bidding war between rival teams without having to compete against other marquee free agents for those teams’ attention, sign a massive one-year contract, and then do it again the next year.

The strategy seems to be highly effective for Hendricks and this particular client (Clemens), but this is an extremely rare case. I am having a tough time thinking of another player that could sit out year after year and securely sign a huge contract with a variety of team choices. I personally would not advise free agents to try the Hendricks strategy in the future. The reward may be high, but I doubt that it would justify the HUGE risk. Clemens knew there was no risk involved, so holding out until the season was underway happened to be justified. Can you name another player that this strategy would work for?

My Jewish friend Mark over at SportsBiz has this to say:

While it’s true that a young player is not likely to be able to afford to wait until the season is a third over, either financially or because he hasn’t established himself, the same is not necessarily the case with an established player who is not a superstar. In fact, that is the player for whom this strategy would likely yield the best results, as he would miss the free agent glut and be on the market at the time when teams have determined what their most immediate needs for this season really are, based on the first month or six weeks of the season. Of course, he would be sacrificing his pro-rated salary, but he would likely make that up in his extra salary due to market conditions.

Really? Because I imagine that most teams (excluding the Yankees, perhaps) plan their budget before the season and work with that number to sign players. Sure, there is no cap, but not every team can spend millions like they grow on trees (see: my hometown Florida Marlins). If you agree with Mark, give me an example. I am interested to see if I am alone in thinking that this strategy is limited to Roger Clemens and perhaps a handful of other players.

-Darren Heitner

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  • http://www.sportsagentblog.com Jason Wulterkens

    You know it may depend on the team and their injury situation more than anything. I think while the Yankees were always keeping Clemens in the back of their mind, their current injury woes, particularly at pitcher, really accelerated their thinking. So maybe for this to work for other veteran superstars or non superstars alike, said player would have to get lucky in a sense, i.e. he’d have to fill a niche that a given club suddenly and unexpectedly needed. And that’s easier for a power pitcher like Clemens to do, I feel.

    It was interesting to read, by the way, that Hendricks was actually negotiating strongly with Boston when Clemens made up his mind.

  • jason wulterkens

    http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2863411

    More drama about the Clemens situation, this time from David Wells, whose main beef relates to the fact that according to his contract, Clemens will not be forced to travel with the team when he isn’t scheduled to pitch.

    However, he also states:

    “Roger might set the tone for the 40-and-above guys,” Wells said, according to the Sun-Sentinel. “Hey, I might do it. He’s a smart businessman.”

    Mike & Mike were bantering about this aspect of his deal as well this morning, asking two things:

    1) Will other teammates resent this kind of special treatment for Clemens; and
    Will travel clauses be further incorporated (or asked for by players through their agents) into future player contracts?

  • Jason

    The Clemens situation is defiantly something that should not be looked as precedent for future free agent negotiations, at least not for 99% of players in the league. Your right Darren that teams, even in baseball with no cap, do indeed carefully plan their budgets. That doesn’t necessarily mean that a team like the Yankees or Red Sox cant come up with a lot of money in a short time if need be, but quiet frankly most teams don’t have the liberty, much less the realistic capability to do that.

    Unless your client is already a name, in an integral position, and that position is in dire straights on a team that can afford to dish out the money (aka The Yankees) it’s not a viable strategy for agents to push. With even a mediocre player, you have zero opportunity to produce leverage with other teams, and furthermore the majority of teams, especially in small markets, couldn’t afford to pay the player even if they wanted to.

  • Harcourt

    Mark what you said seem true to me as well,i think that only marquee players can risk that but i am thinking was he lucky with the having so many injuries but the great sir garry sobers once said sports are 90% technique and 10% luck.

  • Ben

    Very few, if any, other players would be able to draw this kind of money or even sign this late into a season. The reason Clemens is playing for the Yankees is less to do with their pitching injury woes and more to do with their competitors. Clemens won’t be pitching in the bigs for at least a month and by then a number of the Yankees’ starting rotation should be back. The catalyst, though, was when the Yankees landed in Texas last week to start their series with the Rangers, Brian Cashman left a message for Randy Hendricks to set up a meeting. Hendricks was at Fenway Park. When Cashman found out about this, the Yankees knocked the deal out in a matter of hours. Would Clemens have played this year regardless? Probably. Did injuries affect the Yankees’ interest in Clemens? Of Course. But the reason Clemens got signed when he did for the amount he did was because Cashman found out the Red Sox were talking to him and expedited the deal to keep him away from the BoSox. Call it luck, strategy, or whatever but Hendricks was in the right place at the right time to push the Yankees into a situation where they had to sign Clemens or face the possibility of facing him a lot this year. Their are very few organizations who would be able to pull off this kind of money in this short of time: the Yankees obviously with their spend first and let October sort them out strategy, the Red Sox with Theo Epstein, or the longshot Astros (who could only pull it off because of the hometown pull drastically reducing their cost). The reason this is possible is because no one wants to have to pay that outrageous amount of money unless they are sure they are going to have a chance down the stretch (excluding the Yankees) and Hendricks has the luxury of playing teams against one another to start a race for time.

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