Some knowledge regarding payroll and Mets vs Yankees...

what matters to me right now is that D-wright and Reyes love the team and give away FA years below market.

I personally didn't see a fit for Rodriguez here, and I don't want to have anyone locked up through age 42 at 28 per year. We won't ever have the payroll to shrug it off like the skanks. Steinbrenner bought the team for i think 13 million in 1973, it's now valued at 962 million, 40% more than what the mets are valued at. Wilpon had to pay 361 million for Doubleday's share and is financing a stadium.

There is a rule in baseball -- always has been -- but a rule that bud selig decided to only enforce in 2002 -- that a team can only have debts equal to 40% of the value of the team -- and the value isn't the forbes valuation, but a lower number. 2x gross annual revenues -- that was based on 2001 originally, and I cannot find anything that says whether this valuation is re-set every year -- but gross revenue is ticket sales and local TV revenue and net profits from concessions (what they take per the agreement with aramark or whomever) --

The union was really pissed by this development as it occurred, as it meant that even big market teams might have to effectively cap payrolls to avoid having huge long term fixed debt.

Wilpon probably has a lot of outstanding debt on both the franchise purchase and the stadium financing -- I believe he gets tax breaks that make it even out down the line, but he had to borrow sums up front to pay for construction.

MLB is very serious about compliance and can take your team into trusteeship if you fail to get into a compliant situation within a certain time. So, even if you have record attendance, if you're accruing record large liabilities, you have less money to spend on large contracts -- especially ones that span the whole term of your debt, because if we sign A-Rod to a 300 mil deal, and the team stinks in 2 years, and no one comes to the park and ad rates go down on sny (and we only have 1/3 of that while yanks own YES outright) the team would be screwed. They'd have to dismantle their team to keep a-rod or pay someone half of a-rod's salary to take the remaining half. No owner is ever going to say "we had to trade him to stay in 60-40 compliance" so there's going to be odd moves by teams to hold fire sales at times when the public can't see why. Not signing a-rod is a good building block to future flexibility, a move that may mean we can re-sign the left side of our infield to their next contracts.


People often say -- we're in the same city and draw the same almost as the Yankees, we deserve an owner as generous. Well, if Fred literally had a 9000% return on the price of purchase and no debt as a result, that would make sense, but he doesn't. he paid 70% of Forbes' 2007 valuation of the entire franchis for doubleday's shares. So, he hasn't seen any return yet and won't until the franchise is valued at over 722 million.

Wilpons are likely, given Fred's long term debt , as generous as the 60-40 rule allows them to be.

But I'm sure many people will pretend that there is no difference between the Yankees' and Mets situation and that 300 million to move a young star way out of position was a commitment and risk the mets could blithely experiment with.
---------------

This was posted on NYFS by "jpkmets" in a thread about Mets vs Yankees. I figured I'd post it here (with permission), so as to hopefully offer up a rational explaination for why we cannot have an astronomical payroll.