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Home > Jeff Schultz > Archives > 2008 > July > 30
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Braves have money to spend, rebuild
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Given that the line between sports and accounting blurred years ago, the Braves could be excused if they viewed this off-season much like Ms. Peebles in bookkeeping. Never mind the names, the Q-scores or the legacies of exiting players. How fat are the paychecks?
The $14 million pitcher has probably run out of medical miracles.
The $15.975 million pitcher is back from the dead, but too late to resuscitate the banking industry.
The $12.5 million first baseman was dumped for somebody younger, cheaper and not represented by Scott Boras.
The $8 million pitcher has an elbow screaming for retirement.
The $7 million outfielder: an expiring stopgap.
Make way. The Braves are about to head somewhere they haven’t really been in years. The mall.
“It’s a situation we relish, and we’re looking at this off season with great enthusiasm,” said Braves chairman Terry McGuirk.
Let me translate: Nordstrom!
“We know with the kind of money we have coming off the books, we can talk to anybody we want in the marketplace,” McGuirk continued. “There’s certainly a healthy bit of skepticism about the efficiency and the effectiveness of the free-agent marketplace. But we have the ability to go out and get a real horse who can help take us to the top.”
No more plugging holes with slight irregulars or Corky Millers.
Hello, C.C. Sabathia or Ben Sheets?
The Braves might lose five of the top seven salaries from this year’s payroll: Mike Hampton, John Smoltz, Mark Teixeira (already traded), Tom Glavine and Mark Kotsay.
There are different ways to interpret the numbers. In terms of straight salary and bonuses, those five players earn a combined $57,475,184. The Braves have it as something closer to $47 million (and the total payroll as $90-92 million, not $102,365,683). They count only $8 million of Hampton’s $15,975 million salary because that’s their prorated share of his contract, which also has been paid by Colorado and New York. They’re paying only $2 million of Kotsay’s $7 million (Oakland picks up the rest).
No matter. Either way, it’s corporate-weasel nirvana.
Which brings us to Liberty Media. The Braves’ owners really haven’t been tested yet. Their brief tenure hasn’t been the they’re-only-here-for-the-tax-write-off disaster many had forecasted. But neither has the team broke the bank on spending. The Braves’ payroll is up $10 to $12 million over the past two years after holding at about $80 million (Braves’ computations) for three seasons.
What’s to stop a Colorado-based media company from looking at next season with a sense of doom and thinking, “What a fine time to shift some of those millions to marketing porcelain dolls (or pitchers) on QVC?”
McGuirk: “They don’t get involved.”
An owner not involved?
“Liberty Media owns the team. But they’ve allowed the management of the Braves to determine those answers. It’s totally left up to us — 100 percent. They’ve chosen to not have any operating activity. There’s no second-guessing whatsoever. I’ve said that before but people don’t believe me.”
When asked if that meant the Braves were free to balloon the payroll to $200 million, McGuirk said: “I have some sense of what would be the right thing to do. I’m not going to do something stupid.”
McGuirk speculated the team’s payroll would rise slightly next season. But even at status quo, the Braves suddenly have flexibility. That hasn’t been the case since it more than doubled from $50 million in 1997 to $106 million in 2003. That was the year the franchise lost $35 million.
“We had about five years of dwindling attendance and rising payroll,” McGuirk said. “It didn’t take an economic genius to know something had to change.”
So began the slashing. A perfect storm of broken down bodies and expiring contracts has killed the season but plowed the field.
McGuirk calls it “the first time we’ve really had the chance to have a rebuilding effort.” And $47 million will buy a lot of parts.
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