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2011 Major League Baseball Thread

StillUnknown

By StillUnknown
in The Tailgate

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royallypwned

royallypwned

Posted
Posted
He can't be worse than Chip Caray.

:ols: I'd take that bet.

A couple more gems from tonight...after Eric Chavez got a pinch hit single in the bottom of the 9th, the Yankees used Brett Gardner as a pinch runner. During the next AB, Gardner took 2nd base on fielder's indifference. Rhadigan still calls him 'Chavez'. Yet another AB later, Rhadigan is still calling Gardner 'Chavez.'

And to top it off, when the third out had been made to end the game, Rhadigan sounded like he had no clue that was the final out. "oh...that's 3 outs"... "the Rangers get a victory!" :doh: Rhadigan trying to raise his voice with excitement is incredibly awkward.

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ixcuincle

ixcuincle

Posted
Posted

Red Sox before this Jays series gave up the most runs in baseball

Seem to have straightened things out temporarily the last couple of games...now we see what this rotation is actually capable of when everyone is actually pitching well

Dice K actually looked like a MLB pitcher today lol

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DjTj

DjTj

Posted
Posted
:ols::ols::ols:

Maybe he is working on a new pickoff move and hasn't quite figured it out yet. I like how everybody was basically like :wtf: just happened?

"I saw the video of it, and I couldn't help but laugh at myself," Verlander told mlb.com. "It was a weird circumstance. It was funny talking to the umpires. They gave me a hard time about it, too."

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/dailypitch/post/2011/04/verlander-offers-up-one-of-historys-strangest-balks/1

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royallypwned

royallypwned

Posted
Posted
he is correct.

and now as im talking about bourjos, he goes yard.

:ols: well yes...he is.

It's hilarious to google "John Rhadigan sucks" and get the results. Apparently he is not loved by a LOT of people.

Rhadigan needs to be put down.

geez, just finished "watching" the beatdown tonight. Pretty much fast-forwarded through the last five innings. Awful.

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Bubble Screen

Bubble Screen

Posted
Posted
Is it me or are there a lot of broken bats this year? Specifically, broken bats where the big end flies perilously close to hitting another player?

I watching the Braves once this year (think it was against the Brewers), and, if I remember right, the Braves broke a bat on all 3 ground ball outs in one inning! There was a theory about this I heard, but can't remember the specifics. But I think part of the reason for so many broken bats was because guys were using slimmer handles.

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Lombardi's_kid_brother

Lombardi's_kid_brother

Posted
Posted
What exactly does that mean?

Especially for the owner? What does it mean now for his financial stake in the team?

I don't know. He just took out some huge loan to meet payroll.

Clearly, he still owns the team. He just no longer controls its day to day operations.

The obvious solution is that the team needs to be placed in a trust and then sold. That's best for the team, the parties in the divorce, and the league.

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ixcuincle

ixcuincle

Posted
Posted

Olney has very insightful analysis on this.

http://twitter.com/Buster_ESPN/statuses/60819472247816192

The McCourt debt/financial issues were like snow piling on a flat roof: The cave-in for a storied franchise like LAD convinced MLB to move.

Bunch of other tweets there with more information and analysis but too lazy to post more

Red Sox up 5-2

Red Sox appear fixed for now but still DFA Dice K

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TheDoyler23

TheDoyler23

Posted
Posted

Here's a chunk from a much larger article about the financial issues for MLB owners:

http://blogs.forbes.com/monteburke/2011/03/23/special-report-inside-baseballs-debt-disaster/

Special Report: Inside Baseball’s Debt Disaster

Across the country in Los Angeles, Dodgers owner Frank McCourt faces an equally messy legal battle. In 1977 he founded the McCourt Co., a Boston-based commercial real estate firm that specialized in parking lots. Two years later he married his college sweetheart, Jamie Luskin. As McCourt’s business thrived, he hungered for a Major League Baseball team. In 2002 McCourt made an unsuccessful bid for the Boston Red Sox. A year later he looked over the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Finally in 2004, when Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Entertainment Group wanted to get rid of the Los Angeles Dodgers, McCourt realized his dream.

He didn’t have to spend much of his own money to do it. The sale price for the ball club and its stadium in Chavez Ravine was $430 million. McCourt borrowed all but $9 million of the purchase price, an unusually large amount of financing. That sum included a $196 million loan from Fox, which used one of McCourt’s South Boston parking lots as collateral. (Fox later sold the lot for $205 million.)

Major League Baseball approved the deal, apparently believing McCourt would eventually work his way out from under the load. And under McCourt the Dodgers have had healthy returns. Last year revenues were an estimated $246 million (net of revenue sharing) and operating income was $32.8 million. FORBES estimates that the Dodgers’ value has nearly doubled to a current $800 million under his ownership. But the debt increased, too, and now stands at 13 times Ebitda, a problem that came to light in late 2009 when Jamie McCourt filed for divorce.

The central issue in the divorce is the Dodgers. Frank contends that the team is solely his. Jamie believes they are a shared asset. The trial is currently on break, and there is no new court date scheduled. It may not be taken up again until early next year, and how it will end is anyone’s guess. But what’s clear from the court documents is that Frank McCourt used the team as collateral to rack up $459 million in debt from 2004 to 2009.

Over that period McCourt took $108 million of the money in personal distributions and funneled it into the couple’s real estate purchases. It also “supported the couple’s very expensive lifestyle,” says David Boies, the superlawyer representing Jamie. The McCourts bought eight houses across the country, including a $28 million Malibu mansion. (A house in Cabo San Lucas was sold last year.) In 2006 McCourt turned two of the stadium’s parking lots into a separate company, then took a $60 million loan against it. He used $12 million of that on the team and took the rest of the money, court documents say. According to Raman Sain, a principal at accounting firm Holthouse Carlin & Van Trigt, who studied the McCourt’s legal documents on behalf of the Los Angeles Times, Frank McCourt borrowed $23 million against the team in 2008 and $8.5 million in 2009.

Steve Sugerman, Frank McCourt’s spokesman, insists that the team is not financially desperate and is in no danger of falling into bankruptcy. But according to Sain, in 2009 every dollar in free cash the Dodgers earned “was used to make payments on the interest on the debt,” not the principal. (The Dodgers dispute this.) It doesn’t help that many of the Dodgers’ deferred player salaries, like the $20 million still owed to former outfielder Manny Ramirez, are coming due. One way for the team to dig itself out of the hole is by renegotiating its cable television rights, currently owned by Fox, which pays them over $30 million a year, and are due to expire in 2013. The NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers recently landed a reported 20-year, $3 billion agreement with Time Warner Cable. The Dodgers could expect at least that much in a similar deal. But the McCourts’ divorce proceedings have left the team’s leadership in limbo.

The McCourts’ financial statements since 2009 have not been publicly available. Boies says the team has added “tens of millions of dollars” in debt since then, but not, apparently, as much as Frank McCourt would have liked. Though the Dodgers say they have paid back all debt accrued since 2009, in the last two years the team has been turned down for loans from Citibank and the founder of the TV infomercial company Guthy-Renker. A possible business venture with Chinese investors, which would have added some cash to the larder, fell through. Last year the Dodgers took an undisclosed cash advance from cable partner Fox. And in February the Dodgers requested a $200 million loan from Fox—using the team’s next four years of cable rights as collateral. Selig did not approve it.

*

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