Marlins reportedly close to stadium deal, Tuesday’s minor transactions
Crede gets a deal
Endy Chavez gets a raise
Dontrelle Willis gets some money
M’s agree to a one-year deal with Broussard to avoid arbitration
Greg Dobbs claimed off waivers by the Phillies
Most interesting to me are reports that the Marlins may be able to get a new stadium. They want a ridiculous $500m retractable-roof monstrosity, which… whatever. It appears the new governor’s bought into spending money, on the economic benefit canard, and they’re going to get more from city and local sources.
First, the Marlins really do have a horrible lease, and a bad stadium, and they’ve been one of the few teams that could complain about how badly their home hurt them. Sure, their ownership group sucked, but no rational businessman’s going to spend a ton of money when your potential returns are capped extremely low. Of course, no rational businessman would voluntarily get into that situation, especially if the previous guys spent the off-season going around burning bridges. But anyway.
Getting the Marlins into a nice stadium is good for the team and it’s good for baseball’s larger economic healthy. Having crippled franchises in a world where such a heavy amount of revenue is shared helps no one.
The second thing, though, is that MLB won another stadium using exactly the same tactics they used to get the rest of the last wave. They kicked and screamed and threatened, and finally someone caved. That’s not news, right? It is. MLB has, in their not-secret but not-generally-talked-about fund, a colossal sum of money. Selig could have written a check for a new Marlins stadium. Or they could have loaned the money to the Marlins, or financed it themselves.
Now, I understand why they might not have wanted to do those things, especially when they could threaten local governments. But they didn’t have to do that. The reason the Marlins are in such a financial bind is, to simplify too much, all their stadium money goes right to their former owner.
MLB let that go on for years. They didn’t threaten to build a new stadium, or buy the Marlins out of their lease, in order to help renegotiate the lease. They let the team gush money to him for years because it helped make the Marlins more pathetic, and that helped them get public money.
It worked.
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In other minor news, the Times reports that Broussard and the M’s agreed on a new one year contract for roughly 3.55 million. Does this impact his likelyhood of being traded?
The M’s avoided arbitration with Broussard, agreeing on a 1 year deal worth $3.55M.
Considering the squeezing of public money… remind me again why we are fans of the MLB?
Considering the squeezing of public money… remind me again why we are fans of the MLB?
I offer this as Exhibit A.
And frankly, I don’t hold it against MLB or the Marlins for having done so. The failure here lies with the government for handing out the money.
Don’t blame MLB for exploiting the system. Blame the guys who make the system exploitable.
M’s, Broussard agree on one-year, $3.55 million deal.
Evan, I mostly agree, but MLB is able to apply a lot of pressure. And if Miami or Florida doesn’t cave to the pressure, there’s a lot of other places that might. When you have so many different municipalities involved, there’s a lot of different regulatory systems to exploit. That’s not necessarily MLB’s fault, but it doesn’t say to me, exactly, that this is totally Florida’s problem either. Like the downward pressure on pay and labor regulations from globalization (which I am not arguing is necessarily a bad thing, and certainly not inevitably bad), it makes it a little tough to be sure exactly who is at fault.
It’s a big system, and without a national law or policy (which would be just as likely to be a disaster as to be a help–and will probably never happen anyway), MLB and the NBA (and the NFL, though it doesn’t seem to be such a problem there) can keep on playing different cities against each other and getting their way. Again, that’s not necessarily horrible, but I’m not sure that always blaming a particular place makes sense. It seems to be like it’s more the relationship between cities that makes the system so exploitable.
Does this make Broussard more or less valuable to trade?
Who do the M’s have to play 3B at Tacoma?
DOH!! Sorry…Duh…Burroughs! Is that considered an upgrade?
I’ll take Burroughs over Dobbs any day of the week.
And I’ll take Hunter Brown over either of ’em…
Keith Law seems to think Jeff Clement spent some of the year sucking in the Cal League. Did that happen in a bizarro universe where he wasn’t rushed to AAA?
Hmm, there was supposed to be a link with that. Let’s try again:
If that doesn’t work, it’s on the main page at ESPN’s MLB site. Have at it.
Understand front office keeps trades and player movement secret, but isn’t there some rather substantial deal they need to make? If only to keep fans interested. Please let there be something. Even a juicy rumor.
#4 Mat–That made my day. Shouldn’t let that guy get away.
The system in this country is weighted for the owners and the players, obviously, at the expense of the fans and taxpayers.
If Florida had said “no” to the Marlins eventually someone else would have said “yes, please.” Portland, maybe.
One of the reasons soccer is such a big sport in the rest of the world is every community, and most every neighborhood in big cities like London, has its own team with its own loyalties and history and the ability to build a franchise and challenge for the championship.
Not saying such a system would ever happen here — there’s too much money invested in the way it already is. But at least that way owners could quit holding up taxpayers for new stadiums and renegotiated deals every 10 years(see SuperSonics, Seattle).
speaking of minor things, Vidro, Larry Stone & Dave Sims are a;ll scheduyled for the KOMO hot stove show tonight
Is anyone even realizing here that we are paying Broussard $3.55 million to sit on the bench right now?
What’s the point of even taking this team seriously right now? There’s little to no commitment to winning (certainly this team showed by passing on the Matsuzaka bidding that it won’t go the extra mile to win) while Bavasi and Hargrove continue to show off their stupidity each day.
Well, I guess the only thing for me to say now is. . .
GO COUGS!!!
Is ‘canard’ your new favourite word, DMZ? I have to admit, it’s a pretty cool part of the language.
I think the Broussard signing solidifies the runor of Big Ben being traded, because nobody would give a back-up 1B/DH 3.5 million to sit on the bench…oh wait, Bavasi probably would…
I love the subtitle from the article on the M’s site:
DH agrees to $3.55 million deal; pitcher’s terms not disclosed
He’s not going to DH much for the M’s if they think Vidro is going to be full-time there. It’s not like he’s a DH, per se, either.
Anyway, $3.55 million sounds fair to me. Now let’s throw Sexson overboard.
oooh, add Jake Woods and Johnny Moses (from fantasy camp) to that exciting KOMO line-up
oh, I can’t decide which question from the mailbag I love more:
#23: lol, I just love how they leave the most intelligent questions off the mailbag and they let the stupidest ones onto the website.
Hence why I usually go to USSMariner, CBSSportsline, and ESPN.com to get my baseball info rather than an official team website.
I dunno– based on the Times’ letters to the editors, these might BE the most intelligent letters that Corey has received …
That reminds me. Been a couple weeks, maybe we should do another Q&A.
so Derek, does Rene Rivera have the potential to be a star?
That ichiro throw is freakin amazing. Wow. Perfect.