Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
January 12, 2004
The Dodgers and Vlad

Jay Jaffe writes:


Jon Weisman (Dodger Thoughts: http://jonthoughts.blogspot.com/)
linked this LA Times article today (http://www.latimes.com/sports/printedition/la-sp-
angels12jan12,1,4698224.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-sports
) which contains this quote buried fairly deep:

With major league owners scheduled to vote this month on whether to approve the bid of would-be Dodger buyer Frank McCourt, a source said Sunday that McCourt asked Commissioner Bud Selig whether some owners might vote against him if he spent freely to acquire Guerrero yet presented a financing package heavily dependent on loans. Selig offered no assurances, the source said, and McCourt sent word to General Manager Dan Evans to cease talks with Guerrero.
- Bill Shaikin, Los Angeles Times

While Weisman says this article casts doubts as to whether McCourt can afford the Dodgers, I think the real question is whether Selig blackmailed him out of the pursuit of Vlad, and whether that can be seen as some form of collusion.

I'd be interested in seeing the flames fanned on this one, so I'm passing it around...


I don't know about collusion, but it appears to be that in order to get into the club, you can't appear to want to be George Steinbrenner. So, if McCourt goes into the purchase saying he's going to do whatever it takes to build a winner, the "players are bleeding us dry" crowd isn't going to be too pleased. I suspect right now, they are not very pleased with Mr. Moreno, although in no way, shape or form did he over pay for Vlad. But there's not a lot the owners can do now that Arte is one of them. You have to be careful until you're a member, then you can go wild.


Posted by David Pinto at 01:37 PM | Management | TrackBack (1)
Comments

Any chance you could split that URL onto two lines? It's causing side-scrolling in my browser on your page.

Thanks.

Posted by: John Y. at January 12, 2004 01:41 PM

Signing Guerrero to a market-rate contract after unloading most of the Brown/Ashby/Jordan etc. salaries hardly qualifies as going wild - that's my concern.

Posted by: Jon at January 12, 2004 04:58 PM

This is the reprise of the Peter Magowan/Barry Bonds situation. After Wayne Huizenga was awarded the Florida Marlins, it became apparent that the losing bidder for the NL expansion team in Tampa/St. Pete had an opportunity to acquire the San Francisco Giants for about $90 million -- or about $15 million less than Huizenga was purchasing the expansion team. Plus, the Giants came with an existing system of talent AND the Tampa/St. Pete group would earn a nice rebate when the Giants share of the Marlins/Rockies expansion money was awarded to them. Wayne Huizenga ostensibly went crazy when word of this leaked out, and Major League Baseball needed to justify its inflated expansion team price, so they nixed the potential deal with Tampa/St. Pete and forced Bob Lurie to sell to a local purchaser, who claimed that he needed seller financing to complete the deal. Then, after obtaining favorable financing, he turned right around and signed Barry Bonds to a seven-year, $42 million contract, and the owners were downright apoplectic. At least this time, Frank McCourt has inquired in advance, and that potentially sets the stage for some interesting new developments.

Posted by: Zooty Zoot at January 12, 2004 05:10 PM

According to Baseball Library.com, the Bonds signing was completed before Magowan's purchase was approved. You can get there through the above link.

Posted by: Jon at January 12, 2004 06:53 PM

I can't penetrate the link because I do not belong to the L.A. Times membership list, but I was personally involved with the NL expansion process (in my haste, I notice now that I got the purchase price wrong), and I definitely recall that the Magowan deal was a fait accompli before the Bonds signing, even if some perfunctory approval had not been received, because I remember some extremely angry people . . .

Yes, I could be wrong, but I'd like to read the article first.

If there's a way you can send the article to my email address, I'd appreciate it.

Posted by: Zooty Zoot at January 13, 2004 10:22 AM

at the Times and many other registration-requiring newspapers, you can use bselig/bselig as the login and password.

Posted by: Pinch Hinter at January 13, 2004 02:10 PM

I'll be damned. The bselig/bselig thing really works. I'm going to ask bselig himself whether he's aware of that.

I can't find the information about Barry Bonds on the baseball library site, though.

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