Here's the problem with the people angrily wringing their hands and gnashing their teeth about the Marlins/Blue Jays trade
They are not acknowledging that the trade is a good move for the Marlins. "They" includes really good writers like Jeff Passan, who carries on forever here about what a piece of shit Jeffrey Loria is.
[Loria and team president David Samson] were two men who for years lied about their finances, lied about their intentions, lied all to get Miami to build them a $634 million ballpark that was supposed to end this wretched cycle of turning a major league franchise into a swap meet.
Yes. They stink.
And yet all this time, throughout the lies, the SEC investigation, the embarrassing payrolls, the pocketing of revenue-sharing dollars...
All of these are shitty things that Loria has done/been involved with. And yet: the trade was still the right thing for the Marlins to do. They won 69 games last year. There's no reason to expect the Nationals or Braves to get worse this coming season. Would it be better for the Marlins to continue to trot out an expensive but non-competitive team? When the Red Sox pulled this same exact shit three months ago, there wasn't a peep about embarrassment to the game or other such horseshit. That's mostly because Loria is a known asshole and John Henry isn't (to the degree he should be), but the fact is that both teams made almost the exact same move and both of them are better off for it. I'm not the world's biggest Jonah Keri fan, but he hits the nail on the head here. It's worth a read. To wit:
All of these are shitty things that Loria has done/been involved with. And yet: the trade was still the right thing for the Marlins to do. They won 69 games last year. There's no reason to expect the Nationals or Braves to get worse this coming season. Would it be better for the Marlins to continue to trot out an expensive but non-competitive team? When the Red Sox pulled this same exact shit three months ago, there wasn't a peep about embarrassment to the game or other such horseshit. That's mostly because Loria is a known asshole and John Henry isn't (to the degree he should be), but the fact is that both teams made almost the exact same move and both of them are better off for it. I'm not the world's biggest Jonah Keri fan, but he hits the nail on the head here. It's worth a read. To wit:
Thing is, the Marlins weren't going to win with the players they had, at least not for the foreseeable future. Last offseason, they signed Reyes, Buehrle, and Heath Bell while narrowly whiffing on Albert Pujols, breaking the bank in an attempt to build an exciting, winning team as they moved into a new ballpark. After all that, they won 69 games, finishing second to last in the National League in runs scored while allowing more runs than all but four other NL clubs. Free agents tend to produce their best results early in long-term deals, while they're still at or near their prime, then fall off in later years. The Marlins got productive Year 1 performances from Reyes and Buehrle, bundled them with a talented but hugely injury-prone pitcher in Johnson plus a couple of fungible veterans, and cashed them in for some intriguing prospects, plus the GDP of a Pacific island nation in salary relief.
If the Jeff Pearlmans of the world could stop crying about how the sanctity of baseball has been forever tarnished by this deal, maybe they'd realize what Keri realizes. But what's the one thing that Keri:
It's a system, first and foremost, in favor of owners who fall in line with the commissioner's office. ... Loria hasn't made McCourt money from baseball yet. But he's pulled off a series of shrewd and increasingly profitable business moves, exploiting all the advantages afforded to members of MLB's ownership cartel.
and Passan:
[N]ot a word from the commissioner. Not a lamentation that by the time the balloon payments on the stadium hit, Miami taxpayers will owe more than $2.4 billion. Not a sign that he intends to protect the sport from the cretins within. And not a chance, unless public outrage on the matter changes his thinking, that he'll use his best-interests-of-baseball clause to keep Jeffrey Loria and David Samson from murdering another baseball market.
agree on? Not that anyone needed a reminder, but Bud Selig is a real cumbucket. My advice to you: if what Loria did pisses you off, or at least seems wrong on some level, don't bitch and moan about him. Bitch and moan about the system that allows him to be him.
