Drayton Bashers: Is the Giants' Owner Not Committed to Winning?

Well, one shouldn't buy a baseball team if one isn't willing to go out of pocket to the tune of tens of millions of dollars every year. Because if you match your payroll to your revenues, people call you cheap.

I'm sure Giants fans will decry the payroll cuts.

I think D/FW is the only place that currently sees some wisdom in cutting payroll, but that's largely because so many of the guys who got signed to big money contracts in Arlington weren't ever any good (Chan Ho Park, for example).

Why spend $115 million to be in last place, when you can spend $70 million and be in last place?

 

Doesn't Matter. . . he gets a pass because he made the Playoffss


Playoffs are all that matter

Rocket River

 

yeah, right...tell that to McLane, Biggio and Bagwell!!! i didn't see anyone giving them a pass in 97, 98, 99 or 01...all playoff years.

 

agree with mrpaige.

This is going to end up being a 4 page thread.....

 

Actually, I think as long as we have a better record and lower payroll than some teams, Drayton is happy.

 

One thing that the article didn't mention is that Magowan financed his stadium privately, and the club has to service the debt to the tune of $20M+ annually.

 

What difference does that make? Just like McLane, he's going to attempt to match his expenses to his revenues. People expact Drayton to dip in to his personal net worth to offset Astros' losses, would they not expect the same of Magowan? The fact that he has a large expense that the Astros don't have doesn't mean that he's not a cheapskate owner because what makes Drayton a cheapskate owner is his unwillingness to spend more than the team makes.

Granted, McLane has more available personal net worth to liquidate and lose than Magowan, but the concept is the same.

 

The difference is that McLane's asset, Minute Maid Park, was primarily financed by taxpayers and McLane will make up his investment and losses in the Astros many times over when he inevitably sells the team. I don't think that is the issue, though. Drayton's not a cheapskate, he just doesn't know anything about baseball and sticks his nose into the decision-making process too much from the hiring of managers and signing of players to the design of the ballpark.

Drayton is in a financial bind due to his own shortsightedness and commitment to being "fan friendly" against all baseball logic. He tied up too much salary in a small number of players because of mostly sentimental reasons (Biggio's contract extension last year being only one example). Why hold on to Billy Wagner when you have people like Dotel and Lidge waiting in the wings and such a thin starting staff?


I think the more significant issue is that McLane shot the team in the foot by designing the new ballpark to be such a batter's park. Small/middle market teams, like the Astros and Cardinals of the eighties and the current ballclubs in Oakland, Kansas City and Florida can compete more cost-efficiently with the old pitching, speed and defense formula.

By designing a park to emphasize the three run homer to pull the fans in, the Astros put themselves at a financial and strategic disadvantage. The design of the ballpark inflates offense numbers which leads to bad contracts (Richard Hidalgo) on the offensive side while attracting hardly a nible from free agent pitchers. So, while they have been successful in retaining their overrated hitters and attracting Jeff Kent last year, the Astros haven't been able to resign many of their best pitchers (I am thinking of Daryl Kile and Hampton...I realise Randy Johnson wasn't going to happen).

I think McLane's "fan friendly" design of the ballpark (not to mention his choice of managers) also contributed to the Astros becoming one of the slowest and least fundamentally sound teams in the league at manufacturing runs. As a few people here have pointed out, the Astros didn't lose this year only because of poor starting pitching. For all of that offensive firepower production went ice cold for long stretches without bombs from the middle of the line-up.


Summing up, I don't think that McLane is the devil, or even John McMullen, but criticism against him *is* warranted. On a more basic level, I am really, really tired of billionaires in this country whining about their financial problems when they get obscenely lucrative handouts and public assistance for their *private* business ventures. If the sports owners want to immune from public scrutiny they should work in the White House ; ).

 

So, if he had paid for Minute Maid Park, no one would complain about the team living within its means. But since he got the Park from the taxpayers, he also has to spend more than the team generates?

And we don't know that he'll make up his losses. For one thing, selling off other, more productive assets to finance baseball salaries (it's not as if he has tens of millions of dollars sitting in a savings account somewhere) has to be added in (the opportunity cost), and to satisfy those who call him a cheapskate, he'd be looking at at least another $10 million out-of-pocket per season, and probably more than that. Everybody says he'll make it up, but given the rate of growth in baseball franchise values along with the increases in salary demands and the amount Drayton would have to go out of pocket to not be considered a cheapskate, it remains an open question as to whether that's true.

Of course, the spending in and of itself is not really what fans want (spending lots of money doesn't make me want to drive to Arlington during the summer to catch a Rangers game). They simply want the team to win. And when the team doesn't win, it's easy to sit back and say "It's because he doesn't spend enough money", completely ignoring the fact that lots of teams who spend more consistently do worse than the Astros have done during McLane's ownership.

But that's not what you're saying.

 

The criticism in him, though, is almost always of the "He doesn't spend enough money" variety.

If the criticism was more along the lines of what you've posted here, I wouldn't have a problem with it. I could even handle the "Drayton doesn't spend the money they have wisely" (which is part of what you're saying). But the general knock against Drayton is not what you've posted, it's that Drayton doesn't spend enough money. And that's not a fair criticism. He spends what the revenues dictate.

 

We may never know if McLane will make up his losses, or the extent of his losses(he could always open up the books, but that will never happen). We do know this: McLane is still in a private business that invites public scrutiny when his biggest asset, the ballpark, is built for him out of the public trough. The fans are the shareholders without the (non) profit. Forget some sort of notion of baseball being a community treasure, when it takes from the community treasure, it takes on a whole different character. To the fans only wins matter and they matter a lot more now, you know? McLane catches probably an undue ammount of flack for being cheap, but he invited it on himself in his campaign to get a stadium built for him. Remember, McLane said that the new ballpark would allow the team to go after free agents and retain players to bring a championship to Houston. After those statements, the expectations of the public (and, to be fair, after the two NBA championships and a consistent winning team in the Astros) were set. They may have been unrealistic, they may have not accounted for the realities of Houston's media market and MLB market competitiveness, generally, but they were the expectations that McLane, himself, offered to the public in exchange for getting his new toy built. I think a lot of the flak he catches comes from this and his role in the Oilers leaving, but that's a whole 'nother thread.

 

Why should we celebrate if there are 2 cheap owners in MLB..????

2 wrongs don't make a right.


DD

 

If operating your team with regard to your revenues is "cheap" then there are a lot more than two cheap owners in this league.

Interestingly, Steinbrenner makes the cheap owner list by the "Drayton Definition"

 

So you really think that if the Ballpark had been privately financed, people wouldn't complain about Drayton's spending habits vis-a-vis the player payroll?

So is Magowan going to get a free ride from Giants fans because the team paid for PacBell Park? I mean, if the deal is that getting a ballpark means the fans get to make up reasons that may or may not be based in any fact to point to as the reason the team doesn't win (something that happens to 29 MLB teams each year, including of late, the biggest spender of them all), then Magowan is off the hook. He's untouchable. Even though his team hasn't won anything and even though he's cutting payroll now to keep from losing money, he gets a free pass because he paid for the Park?

I kind of suspect people in Frisco are going to complain a little about the Giants cutting payroll, though. And I suspect that Drayton would still be seen as cheap even if he paid for the MMP.

I just don't think anything can make an owner liked unless the team is winning World Series. It always falls in the owner's lap.

I mean, Tom Hicks has spent out the wazoo in Arlington, but that sure hasn't kept him from being widely criticized.and held as a bad owner (but not a bad hockey owner. I wonder why that is?)

My point is that running the team into the ground financially and likely getting nothing more to show for it is not only not good business, it's probably not good baseball. There are many areas in which McLane probably deserves criticism, but choosing to not follow the lead of the Texas Rangers and spend, spend, spend is not one of those areas.

I just think people need to get off the guy's back about the level of payroll because it's a bogus issue. You can complain all you want about how that payroll has been spent, but the payroll is apparently at the level in which the revenues dictate.

 

Drayton is a lying piece of crap.

He was one of the main reasons that the Oilers left.

He said the Astrodome was perfectly fine for both football and baseball, then the Oilers left, and IMEDIATLY he starts whining about how he needs a new stadium......what a crock !

Then he talks about spending more money now that his revenue stream is up....

We get what we wanted....a bottom line owner...

No more bottom line Bud....it is Miserly McLane !!


DD

 

if only there were more Cubans in sports.


EDIT: By Cubans I meant rich guys who will throw their money away for overpaid players to win. Ahem.....Mark Cuban. By overpaid, I am not pointing fingures, just saying that it is rediculous how much money athletes are making...yes, i am jealous.

 

Drayton does have a way of stretching the truth.

The Bud Adams/Bob Lanier feud is the powder keg that set off the Oilers leaving. Bud wanted a Dome Palace downtown, that would not have been economically viable. Nor did he have the support of the other two major league franchise owners in town.

Amen. I always point this out as much as possible, when the Drayton-apologists start kissing his a$$ and standing up for him, I always tell them look back to that preseason game the Oilers refused to play because of the conditions of the field and the venue. IIRC, Drayton's words were," The Astrodome is still a world-class facility, and I am proud to have my team play here." or something to that effect. And not even five months later he was threatening to sell the team to a north Virginian businessman who planned to sell the team.

As for the revenue stream...well again here comes the stretching of the truth. The payroll was supposed to escalate, however after the move into MMP, Drayton comes forward saying that the money he would've gotten from the new stadium has already been used to keep the at-the-time NL Central Championship Astros together. Yeah thats a crock.

As for the sentiment that McLane is a billionaire, and should dip into his personal wealth to up the payroll is not entirely unheard of. If he truly is a fan of the game and wants the team to be a championship ballclub, then he needs to invest more into his team. Baseball is a business. When signing players, you make an investment in that player and hope to get a better return. If he wants better revenue streams, invest in the team (with Hunsicker and a little more money the team could definitely be elite) and start winning and then networks will take notice and want to pay more to have you braodcast on their stations.

I've said it in the past, owning a baseball team is a toy to these owners. Most of them are wealthy because of the businesses that they run. McLane is not a stupid businessman, if he was he wouldn't be a billionaire. But when he constantly runs off at the mouth crying on how he has lost $125 million since owning the team, and saying he doesn't have the means (revenue wise) to raise the payroll, thats when he looks just plain stupid.

McLane always talks about being a champion this, what have you done to make the Astros a champion that. What he needs to do is quit lying to the die-hard fans who empty their wallets and have their hearts broken for this team. Either say that all you want to do is field a semi-competitive team that you hope makes the playoffs and quit using the word champion, or step up to the plate and invest more into the team and try to make them...dare I say it.... a champion.

 

I KNOW WHAT THE ASTROS DO NEED!