DODGERS The ongoing OWNERSHIP Thread

Boycott ongoing until frank is eliminated.

 

From averaging 48,000 to having 29,000 at a game is more than Frank. The organization has to do SOMETHING to get fans to flock there CONSISTENTLY and will probably end up having to reduce capacity.

I don't buy "once Frank hands his keys over the stadium will be full". It's too empty for that to be the case. 56,000 on opening day to 29,000 the next. That's bad. I understand it is a week night against the Pirates and it is cold outside. But 29,000 in LA is atrocious.

Even if we average 48,000 again, a 56K seat stadium looks empty. I will call into Dodger Talk soon and ask about what they think of reducing capacity. Seeing empty seats grows old for me, the players, etc.

 

Nope if they wouldn't have made frank a billionaire and let him keep his greedy paws involved in this fans would flock. I am sick to my stomach because I don't think we got anything better. If Guggenheim are so out of touch that they pay 500 MILLION over what the next highest bid was and allow frank to keep ANYTHING then what hope do we have for the future with idiots like this running the show. I personally won't go back until frank dies. This was no sale it was collusion from his buddies and a PR stunt.

 

Oh and kudos to the poster boy for sitting next to frank opening day.

 

This time a year ago the world thought Bud Selig was so powerful and the commissioner was supreme. Now we know he just took it up the butt from McCourt and is beyond having not clothes.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/dodge...ccourt-sale-20120411,0,903683.story?track=rss

 

It isn't fully accurate that they paid over 500 million above the next highest bid. There was no auction bid. They submitted the bid the night before the auction and Frank said dang I will take that and cancelled the auction. Had the auction been allowed to continue we would know how high the losing bids would have gone. Guggenheim partners knew what they wanted and submitted a bid to get it without allowing competition. They may well have told Frank take it or our opening bid will still be 1.6 million, leaving Frank to take the certainty of the 2.2 billion and 600 million or run the risk of getting much less. When they made the parking lot arraingement that probably made it a deal Frank couldn't turn down and left the others out in the cold. We don't know how high Cohen would have gone had he been allowed to compete!

 

The Guggenheim purchase was more lucrative to them then it would have been for their competitors.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2012/04/06/new-dodgers-investors-will-get-big-tax-breaks/

 

I posted the link in the ownership thread along with part of the article. The tax breaks for buying the team were greater for Guggenheim partners than it would have been for the other two bidders. It is worth more to them and their actual cost is not as high as it seems. They are using a ton of money from their other business assets and will be able to depreciate the cost of buying the Dodgers to offset profits elsewhere. They aren't dumb.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2012/04/06/new-dodgers-investors-will-get-big-tax-breaks/

 

Just be happy about the ownership change.

 

So a conspiracy theory and 50% stake in a parking lot is going to keep you from enjoying yourself? Life is too short for that, IMO.

 

Pity the Padres now wanting to sell under the control of MLB and not having anywhere near the freedom bad boy McCourt had. The articles about that are being written and the question is can Selig get the horses back in the barn or are they going to want to run like McCourt was allowed. This sale is a major monkey on the back of Bud as other owners who have complied are treated like they are still in the stable.

 

@BillShaikin: Gross approves #Dodgers sale.

 

Wait until folks read the break down of today and the entire event in perspective and realize McCourt is a sexual wizzard. He managed to butt F Bud at the same time that he had Bud performing oral on him. The other owners aren't happy. The BK upheld the settlement agreement between Bud and Frank as it pertains to post sale rights for the new owner.

 

http://www.latimes.com/sports/dodge...ccourt-magic-johnson-20120413,0,4230565.story

The above is presented without comment!

 

Jason Stark isn't so sure and he is using history to decide.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/page/rumblings120413/bet-new-los-angeles-dodgers-owners-spending-big



Commentary
Reconstructing the Dodgers
Don't expect new owners to start throwing big money at top free agents
Updated: April 14, 2012, 1:39 AM ET
By Jayson Stark | ESPN.com

This is for all the amateur psychics out there who think they can predict the future of the soon-to-be back-from-the-dead Los Angeles Dodgers.

This is for all the free agents who think they can just drive past Chavez Ravine on the Pasadena Freeway next winter and find quarter-billion-dollar contracts floating in the breeze.

Don't be so sure you know where this is leading. That's our advice.

Don't be so quick to assume the new, improved Dodgers of Stan Kasten and Magic Johnson can't wait to start handing out the largest contracts in the history of the solar system. We're cautioning you now. That just might be a dangerous assumption.

To predict the future, you should always study the past. That's what our history teachers always told us in the seventh grade, anyway. And some of us in that class were actually awake at the time, amazingly enough.

Well, what do you find if you study Kasten's past, back in the day when he was the president of the Atlanta Braves (1986-2003) and Washington Nationals (2006-10)? You don't find a single contract that will remind you of, say, the Prince Fielder deal. We'll tell you that.

In all that time, Kasten's teams never handed out a contract longer than five years to any free agent from outside their organization. And the only six-year deal, even to one of their own players, went to Andruw Jones in 2001 -- at a time when he was 24 years old.


Incoming owner Magic Johnson sat with outgoing owner Frank McCourt on Opening Day at Dodger Stadium.

So do people within the industry see this man suddenly turning into a spend-a-holic who starts firing nine- and 10-year deals at whoever wants to take them? Heck, no.

"That's not Stan Kasten's M.O," said one veteran agent. "I'm sure they'll be a franchise that makes moves. But I'm also sure that when Stan makes decisions, it won't be like the kind of decisions Mike Illitch makes."

"When it looks like a sure thing, it ain't," said another prominent agent. "Look at the Nationals. Ted Lerner has more money than God, and look how long it took him to start handing out big contracts. And did he hand them out while Stan was there? No. It happened after he left. So I know everyone anticipates him spending wildly now. But I'm not so sure."

Is it coincidence that the Nationals stuffed $126 million in Jayson Werth's pockets a couple of months after Kasten departed? We don't know anyone in baseball who thinks Kasten would have signed off on that deal.

And maybe Ryan Zimmerman would have gotten his six-year, $100 million extension (an eight-year, $126 million commitment when you add in his current contract) even if Kasten were still in D.C. But we'll never know that. Will we?

All we know for sure is how Kasten's teams have operated in the past. And while it's true that history shows us his teams in Atlanta were at or near the top of the National League in payroll for years, it also shows us this was a man who never appeared to be working from the "You Too Can Be a Steinbrenner" playbook.

So what can we learn from that history? Nobody in baseball has a better feel for that than Kasten's longtime general manager in Atlanta, John Schuerholz.

"It's fair to say this group is out to re-establish the great Dodger brand," Schuerholz told Rumblings. "But how that translates into making decisions to spend big money on big-name free agents, I don't think that's automatic."

Now would Schuerholz be surprised to see the Kasten/Magic Dodgers chasing the most ballyhooed free agents in the game? No, he "wouldn't be surprised to see them do that," he said.

"But I don't think they'll do it every day," Schuerholz said. "I don't think they'll do it all the time. What I'm sure they'll do is what Stan has always tried to do -- build a rock-solid organization and build it largely around homegrown talent. And at the same time, I'm sure he won't shy away from the right free agent. But I underline the word, 'right.'"

In all those years in Atlanta, the "right" free agent didn't come along very often. But there were times, Schuerholz conceded, when he and Kasten did opt to stretch beyond their normal budget parameters for "the right player at the right time."

And by that, of course, he was referring to -- who else? -- Greg Maddux. Heck, you were expecting maybe Charlie Puleo?

"When we signed Greg [in December, 1992], both the length and the dollars went outside our guidelines," Schuerholz said. "But Stan and I both felt it was the right thing to do."

When the Braves shocked the world (and the Yankees) by signing Maddux, they were willing to make him the second-highest paid pitcher in baseball, behind David Cone. They were also willing to give him their first-ever five-year deal.

On the other hand, that was 20 years ago, remember. So that blockbuster was for (ready for this?) a whopping $28 million over those five years. Nowadays, Kasten might find himself talking to pitchers who think they should be making nearly that much per year. For six or seven years. So even if you adjust for inflation, it's a different world.

But when Schuerholz was asked if he could see Kasten's Dodgers rolling the dice on any pitcher for $20-25 million a year, the reply was very telling.

"I don't think Stan rolls the dice at anything," Schuerholz said. "I don't think he's ever rolled the dice. Stan analyzes. He relies on his experience and his instincts … and he makes an analytical decision about what's the right thing to do for the franchise."

Obviously, the right thing to do for the Dodgers, at this critical point in their history, won't have much to do with what was right for the Braves in 1997 or what was right for the Nationals in 2009. And everyone understands that.

So Kasten has told his friends in the business he knows that he and Johnson have to operate the Dodgers as a big-market club. It's what their public demands. It's what the entire sport needs.

But there are also questions. First question: After spending $2 billion dollars for the franchise, how much further in the hole can the new owners go?

"The problem is, they'll be losing money at this price for a long time," said an official of one club. "But they also know they've got to get their fans back."

Second question: How much money can this group really afford to lay out before the dollars from its new TV deal start flowing in 2014?

"Remember," said one of the agents quoted above, "they can't see daylight until they make a TV deal. And you also have to remember, you don't know what the financial structure of that deal is going to be."

If the Dodgers make a deal with a huge up-front rights fee, that's one thing. But if they start up their own regional sports net, as an independent entity, that's a totally different animal.

But either way, and no matter which world-famous free agent they may be flirting with, said John Schuerholz, "Stan's not going to say, 'Let's give this guy $100 million because he wants it.' Stan's going to say, 'Why?'"

Oh, the answer may very well be: "Because it's the right thing to do for the future of the Dodgers." But it had better be -- because if anyone is still assuming this team will be serving up as many nine-figure deals as Dodger Dogs any time soon, we repeat:

That could be a very dangerous assumption.

 

I hope

 

Who cares, all the long term deals getting handed out are stupid. I'd be happier if the Dodgers werent part of it except in very specific cases.

 

This is probably why Kasten has had such long term success. We need a big bat so he might be willing for the right player and pitching may well depend on Bills keeping this up and DeLarosa bouncing back. He might decide that is a very decent 1-3 and Hamels is to expensive. If Bills backslides from his start and Delarosa doesn't recover well he might consider Hamels right. Might not have gone after Fielder and we will never know if he would have. He will spend money on the draft, player development and expect our number of advanced scouts to increase if they haven't already.