Recently, ESPN’s Keith Olbermann called out Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria for the $325 million contract with Giancarlo Stanton, claiming it was just another Marlins scam.
http://youtu.be/CcCH_VwXlV0?list=UUdJtV6wXT6lnrvldU_urowQ
Olbermann makes a number of points in the video, which is worth your time to watch. Among the obvious include the Marlins failed attempt of spending their way into relevancy back in 2012, when they spent $312 million on several players and traded for Chicago White Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen. After yet another dismal season the following year the Marlins unloaded all of their players–just as they had done in ’97 and ’03.
“It’s a SCAM”, deduces Olbermann. “They win a little, they make some headlines, they spend money, they lose money, they trade everybody except one token superstar–it was Livan Hernadez in ’97, it was Miguel Cabrera in ’03, and it’ll be Stanton in 2016. By which point, Jose Fernandez is pitching for the Dodgers and Christian Yelich is playing center field for the Yankees.”
Oblermann, it should be noted, is a struggling late night host chasing ratings and fighting irrelevancy the best way he knows how: with pointed commentary and flashy rhetoric. We’ve seen his act before. But we have to ask…is he right?
As our own Andrew Ferrall has pointed out, the Stanton contract is heavily backloaded. So much so, in fact, that for the first several years the Marlins get Stanton at a substantial discount. With rumors of a possible future sale, it’s easy to start thinking that Jeffrey Loria, the Marlins owner, will skip town before he has to pay that monster contract.
Do you think he noticed Steve Balmer buying the Clippers for $2 billon? I wonder what he thought about that…
Oh and let’s not forget that Loria has sold a team before. That’s right. Jeffrey Loria was the previous owner of the Montreal Expos. He sold the team to Major League Baseball for $120 million, then bought the then-Florida Marlins for $158.5 million. Oh, but don’t forget the $38.5 million interest free loan Major League Baseball gave him.
This seems a good time to mention that Jeffrey Loria, before he was a baseball owner, made his living as an art dealer.
Art. Which is essentially paint on canvas and not physically worth very much, yet often valued at ridiculous sums of money because of some whimsical reason not based on any strict code or objective measure but rather a wholly imaginary estimation of worth.
So, for years, this man’s occupation was to buy and then sell a product with an imaginary value. And now he owns a baseball team whose value he just doubled overnight, but whose immediate price tag isn’t unbearable.
Hmm.
What was it that Olbermann said? That the Marlins were the best at seeming to spend money? Ah that’s right. It all makes sense now. The Manhattan art dealer has eyed his next move. First, with public funding, he got a new stadium. Then, he increased the total value of the roster in a manageable way. Next? Oh, let me guess.
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