Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
November 29, 2007
Paying for Santana

Murray Chass suggest Carl Pohlad should pay for Johan Santana out of his own pocket:

The owner of the Kansas City Royals from their birth in 1969 until his death in 1993, Kauffman operated the Royals as if they were a public trust and financed them partly with his personal fortune. Kauffman spent what he had to spend to keep players like George Brett, Frank White, Willie Wilson, Dan Quisenberry and Bret Saberhagen.

I don't know if Pohlad has put any of his personal fortune into the Twins, but it is considerable. A longtime banker, the 92-year-old Pohlad is tied for 114th on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest people in the country with a fortune estimated at $3.1 billion.

One reason Pohlad is so wealthy is that he doesn't toss away money. However if his net worth $3.1 billion, investing poorly he's still going to make about 5% a year on his money. That's over $400,000 a day. So two months interest on Carl's money pays a $20 million dollar salary. My guess is Pohlad does much better than 5%, so he could pay Santana, still have an extremely high income, and never touch the principle.

Steinbrenner would do it because George is driven to win. Pohlad appears to be driven to accumulate wealth, so operating a business at a loss just to win is not in his blood.


Posted by David Pinto at 04:50 PM | Owners | TrackBack (0)
Comments

And at the age of 92, WTF is this man saving money for?

Posted by: John at November 29, 2007 06:22 PM

Really good cryogenic freezing?

Posted by: matthew at November 29, 2007 06:34 PM

oh, I'm sure he wants to win. he's probably trying to crack the top-100 before he dies.

Posted by: josh o. at November 29, 2007 06:44 PM

In response to the first comment, one heck of a 100th birthday party?

Posted by: JeremyR at November 29, 2007 09:12 PM

Puts the poor, poor small market argument in perspective.

Posted by: Mark at November 30, 2007 06:52 AM

Yes, for all the bull#$%^$# George Steinbrenner gets for his payroll, he at least is putting his money into his team. Not to mention that other teams (Rockies, e.g.) then raise their ticket prices when the big, bad Yankees come to town.

Posted by: rbj at November 30, 2007 08:19 AM

This is one of the reasons that revenue sharing is a crock of crap. These other owners are pocketing all this money from the "bigger" teams, meanwhile they don't even spend the money that they make or the money that they have available to them. What a load of s%#$.

Posted by: sabernar at November 30, 2007 09:59 AM
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