wbt5845 said:
DallasAg 94 said:
The plan is clear.
Get a new stadium built to increase the value of the team.
Let long-term contracts cycle out.
Sign short-term gambles in hopes to trade off for prospects.
Stack the minor-league system with cheap high-ceiling talent.
Sell the team for huge money positioned to win.
Prophet.
The talent has just not materialized... and the trade-market has had very little value in the past few years.
I'll take an unpopular position - do you blame them?
Mr. Davis and Simpson showed no compunction with opening up their wallets to do whatever it took to win through the pennant runs - 7 years worth, pretty much. I doubt the club showed positive cash flow through much of this era. Pay Fielder, Hammel, Lee, Choo, Beltre, Darvish - on and on and on.
And now, with the O&G market tanked, they're sitting on what? Over a BILLION dollars of equity
GD right I'd sell.
I think you can not blame them for wanting to sell, now, in this moment, and be rightfully upset and annoyed with them at the same time.
Getting a sweetheart deal on a new stadium and tanking the payroll has nothing to do with the current economy, of course. That all started 3+ years ago.
They bought the club for a bargain price, after the trade deadline during the franchise's first World Series run. I guess they "paid" Adrian Beltre, but in retrospect, got one of the bargains of the century on that deal. I'll certainly grant them they ramped the payroll up 2011-2014, then kept pace with the league for a few years.
If they really intend to sell, and find a buyer, we'll know 3 things for sure: (1) They walked into a great situation; (2) The club's on-field performance gradually, consistently slipped over time; and (3) They stopped committing payroll almost the second the taxpayer gave them half a billion dollars to build a new stadium.
The question that we'll almost never know for sure is how much previous spending was in good faith and how much was simply in recognition of the axium that you have to spend money to make money.
