I honestly think Boras planted that 200Mil seed so far into JDM head that he sees anything not that as an insult...
Seriously? JDM has been an All Star once, in 2015, his only full season. In no other year did he manage 500 at bats (460 was his next highest total). He’ll turn 31 this season. He’s a poor base runner, a mediocre fielder. Even coming off a career year, he’s never finished top 10 in MVP voting let alone won one. Even conceding that most players are confident in themselves, JDM has to realize that he’s not Mike Trout, if he has an ounce of self awareness. He’s not as good as Goldschmidt, the guy AZ actually needs to save its pennies to spend on.
JDM’s an excellent hitter but not a great player. That’s not a guy who gets paid top 5 money in baseball. Boras knows that.
I don’t know how much negotiating you do, but you don’t convince your client that he’s worth top of the market money unless you’re pretty sure he is and that others can objectively see that. Otherwise, you’re setting him up for disappointment, which he’ll blame on you. And if Boras DID think JDM should get $200M, then he’d have floated $250M as a way of setting the negotiating parameters. Mentioning $210M likely meant they were shooting for $175-180M, but Boras would have had JDM expecting even less - say, $150M. That way, if/when they get $160-170M, JDM is happy and thinks Boras did a great job.
The big problem is not that they aren’t getting $200M offers, it’s that the market overall is topping out lower than most people expected (and/or realizing the agents’ worst fears, as there’s some evidence that they recognized the MLBPA negotiated a bad deal and they saw this correction coming.)