11-14-12 – Toronto Marlins, Dickey to LAD, Wilpon-Rich, 2013 Payroll

I'm writing this watching Sportscenter at 7pm on Tuesday night and I assume what I'm hearing is true. Basically the Marlins payroll comes in around $25mil, down from over $100mil in 2012. Crazy. I have a post coming up at 12noon today that I finished about an hour ago that lowered the Mets payroll in 2013 to $31mil and, guess what? The Marlins beat me out!

This is a good test for the Commissioner. Can you do this? Can you just completely destroy what you built one year ago? It will really surprise me if the league gives this robbery their stamp of approval. 

And what is the Toronto rotation?

And, BTW, congrats all you tax payers in Miami. ($2.4 billion in stadium bonds over 40 years) Aren't you glad you paid for that stadium now?

All of a sudden Fred Wilpon doesn't look that bad, does he?



The Dodgers have $623 million in guaranteed salary for 39 player-seasons over next 7 years.

Included in this is:

          LF: Carl Crawford - $21mil+ through 2017

          CF Matt Kemp - $21mil+ through 2018

          RF Andre Ethier - $18mil through 2017

          OF Yasiel Puig - $42mil over 7-yrs through 2017

The first question that comes to me is where the hell is Puig going to play, but the real question is what about prospects Alex Castellanos, Scott Van Slyke, Brian Cavazos-Galvez, or Joc Peterson?

These four guys are still Dodgers, right? Is there any team that fits more perfect for a trade for RA Dickey.

Dickey for Castellanos and Van Slyke.

Castellanos in 2012 – AAA - .328, 17-HR, 52-RBI

Van Slyke in 2012 – AAA - .327, 18-HR, 67-RBI

Done.

Here’s a different spin on the whole ‘Mets Broke’ shit going around the internet. It comes from someone named ‘acerimusdux’ on NYFS:

          Bottom line here, I think they are closer to ending up on the Forbes 400 in the next three years then they are to losing the team. Every single thing that was hanging over them 3 years ago seems to have been resolved in their favor.

1. Commercial real estate, Sterling's main business (the Mets are a sideline) has recovered, with prices more than doubling off 2009 lows.

2. The max they will have to repay in the Madoff settlement is $79M. And the max they can be personally liable for is $29M.

3. The Dodgers sale suggests that the actual value of the team is at least double what Forbes has recently been estimating.

4. The Forbes estimate of a $2.5B valuation for SNY is stunning. That would leave a cool $2B in equity there after accounting for the SNY debt, with Sterling owning a 2/3 share of that. Any banker who really believes that estimate is going to happily allow them to personally pocket a cool half billion in a refinancing, if they wish.

5. Let’s not forget they just landed a huge deal to develop Willets Point, which might involve as much a $3B in financing over the next 20 years.

For the Wilpons, 2009 was a perfect storm. Real estate collapsed, the team sucked despite a huge payroll, they lost $500M in a ponzi scheme, and then they got slapped with a $1B lawsuit on top of that. If they are still standing at this point, I doubt they are going anywhere anytime soon.

Interesting…

Eno Sarris continues to do the math on the ever-changing 2013 Mets payroll:

Eno Sarris‏ - @enosarris -  So do we have our answer for how much Bay will cost this year? $15m deferred according to Heyman. $6m this year? So that says to me that the Mets current payroll is $81m ($56m contracts, $9m arb (no Torres/Pelf/Acost), $500k x roster spots, $6m Bay). If the Mets' current roster costs $81m, they have $15-20m to spend. Still think it will end <$100m. Prob an OF ~$10m or less, 1 MLB deal RP.

I just don’t understand why Sandy Alderson has to treat both the Mets press and the community like idiots and spoon feed us information. What is the big deal about being transparent about the Bay deal? Isn’t being transparent what we all strive for now? That being said, I remember when transparent was a bad word so what the hell do I know.

Roster Moves

St. Louis – signed C Rob Johnson to a minor league contrat

St. Louis – released P Kyle McClellan – 0-1, 5.30, 1.34, 16-G

Baltimore – signed Dan Meyer -

Baltimore – signed Daniel McCutchen –

Texas – signed Zach Simons –

Chicago – signed Scott Baker -