Bloops: A-Rod objects to Rangers’ bankruptcy plan
Posted by Neil Paine on July 29, 2010
This is a bizarre story from ESPN:
"Alex Rodriguez filed an objection to the Rangers' bankruptcy plan Wednesday over concerns about whether he would receive the $24.9 million he's owed in deferred compensation.
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Rodriguez isn't the only player listed as a creditor. Current Rangers third baseman Michael Young is owed nearly $4 million. Other former players among the list of creditors include Kevin Millwood ($12.9 million); Vicente Padilla ($1.7 million); Mickey Tettleton ($1.4 million); and Mark McLemore ($970,051.97)."
Gee, do you think maybe owing millions to long-gone guys like A-Rod, Millwood, Padilla, Tettleton and McLemore had anything to do with the Rangers' financial straits?
July 29th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
We had an argument in some thread a few weeks ago about whether Rodriguez's contract prevented the Rangers from winning. Not only were they still paying the rest of their team -- minus A-Rod's contract -- as much as their divisional rivals, but Rodriguez then renegotiated and agreed to defer a lot of money to give them more financial flexibility. He should be watching carefully to make sure Selig's efforts to have the team sold to one of his lapdogs, rather than the highest bidder, won't cost him.
July 29th, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Tettleton hasn't played for the Rangers since '97, McLemore since '99. I'd love to know how they still owe them so much $.
July 29th, 2010 at 4:05 pm
Is this not part of the reason why this team has had no playoff appearences in several years. 24 million is a lot of money to owe one person. Of curse, there may be more teams in the same boat, but it has not come out yet.
July 29th, 2010 at 4:06 pm
They owe them so much because of deferred payments.
July 29th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
The enormous amount of deferred compensation owed by MLB teams has been highlighted in several articles - but I've never seen a complete accounting. Supposedly the current owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks was shocked to find that he owed more than $200 million to former players (guys like Bernard Gilkey) when he bought the team in 2005. A similar article recently highlighted payments owed to former Mets.
So it is hard to say how much is still out there, but in the current downturn it is clearly hurting every team -- except perhaps the Yankeees -- and I also assume that the agents who put these deals together received their own money up front...
July 29th, 2010 at 4:15 pm
I bet Tettleton didn't even know he was owed money, unless he REALLY deferred his payments, or got a great interest rate from the Rangers.
July 29th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
If they want to improve, they need Cantu, but they cant afford him. He is owned only about 3 million! Check out http://www.thefantasybaseballguru.com leave comments ask qs and tell me what you think.
July 29th, 2010 at 7:35 pm
Posting your ad on every thread is a sure way NOT to get me to check out your site.
July 30th, 2010 at 8:22 am
Can't wait to see how the media, particularly in New York, spins this into some conspiracy theory about ARod deliberately bankrupting the Rangers because he is so morally bankrupt.
July 30th, 2010 at 9:27 am
I am a Yankees Fan, and I think A-Fraud should not be paid anything, he cheated, and it should be him owing the Rangers, Mariners, and Yankees for cheating. His should be banned from the game, and all stats and records should be wiped out. That goes for all players who test positive for PEDs. I don't care what team your on or who you are, if you cheat, you shouldn't be allowed to play, shouldn't be allowed into the Hall of Fame, and should have all stats and records wiped out as if they never happened. He should have to get a pay-cut after testing positive. As a DieHard Yankee Fan, even I want him out, whenever he gets a hit, RBI, or Home Run I always wish it was someone else, even if I never heard of them before. His 600th HR means nothing to me, I wont celebrate it, If I caught his 600th HR ball, I would write "Cheater's Never Win, Neither Will You" In permanent marker and make sure he gets that ball. I would rather have a bad but clean 3rd baseman, than a "good" but juiced 3rd baseman. A-Fraud is a greedy idiot, I celebrate getting $50, and he is whining about $24,000,000 when he is going to make triple that in 2 years. Why not donate that money to starving kids in Africa? Thats what I would do if I was a Major League Baseball Player. They need it a lot more than I do.
July 30th, 2010 at 9:33 am
Karma is a bitch isn't it?
Why not get GWB involved again and get the
taxpayers to pay off the debts the sane way he
got them to pay for their shiny new stadium?
TD
July 30th, 2010 at 9:50 am
Zach, that must be you I hear booing Whitey Ford on Old-Timer's Day, right?
July 30th, 2010 at 10:23 am
Zach-
The Rangers (and Yankees and Mariners) paid ARod to be the best baseball player he could be. If anything, taking steroids should get him a pay raise, as he went above and beyond to be the best he could be. Seeing as he was never caught breaking any rules, he served no suspension and, ergo, his teams only benefited from any PEDs he might have used. I applaud him!
July 30th, 2010 at 10:48 am
Zach,
You are a moron and that is being extremely polite. I won't waste my time proving my point because clearly you are the type of person who thinks they are always right but I just wanted to make sure I told you how dumb you were, in case nobody has before. Have a great day.
July 30th, 2010 at 11:01 am
No BSK, we should celebrate the fat slobs who played the game "naturally," not the guys who worked hard to make the quality of play better.
July 30th, 2010 at 11:10 am
Yea, all those guys who played "the right way" by slacking off. THAT is what baseball is about. F all these jerks and their effort.
July 30th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
1) Need to figure out a way to ban this annoying "Max" guy
2) I love how generous people without money are. How do you know Arod doesn't need the money so that he CAN donate a huge portion of it?
July 30th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Deferred money should be the bane of any franchise. You are setting in motion a chain of events that, when they reach fruition, will leave your team with no room for new contracts.
Win now, at all costs. We'll figure out how to pay for it later. It shows absolutely no foresight.
Maybe, when a player gets traded, the deferred money he is owed should also go. After all, it is part of the contract. When the player goes, his contract goes with him, right?
If anything, isn't being owed money by more than one club a conflict of interest? What if an unscrupulous owner (nah...there's none of them out there...) offered to increase the deferred money he owed a player, in order to get that player to "let up" a bit in a key series against his club?
It's not so far-fetched, when you look at some of the crap that was going on 100 years ago. And owners, like their big business brethren, are likely no more scrupulous than they were back then.
Johnny Twisto (#1), please don't characterize our prior discussion as an argument (if it is me you are referring to), as that was never my intent. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing, as long as we do so with mutual respect.
July 30th, 2010 at 2:30 pm
I didn't remember who the disagreement was with. I did not think "argument" was a bad thing.
You make a good point about a possibility for conflict of interest. The money is being deferred from a particular time, and it wouldn't seem fair for the Yankees (or whoever) to have to pay Rodriguez money that the Ranger didn't pay him in 2002. Of course, if they knew they had to be on the hook for the deferred payments, then they could take that into account when choosing to trade for him. I suppose the deferment agreements are separate from the original contract, and simply state that a particular party (the current team) will pay part of the agreed money in the future. Anyway, I guess it's not much more likely that an owner would offer to increase future payments to a former player than for one to simply offer any player on another team money.
July 30th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
If you want to talk about absurd Deferred Compensation Contracts, how about the one the Mets are going to be paying Bobby Bonilla starting in 2011.
This from the Wikipedia on Bobby Bonilla
The New York Mets placed Bonilla on unconditional waivers in 2000. He spent the 2000 season playing for the Atlanta Braves. The Mets agreed to pay out the remainder of Bonilla's contract by deferring the $5.9 million that he was due. The Mets will pay him 25 equal payments of $1,193,248.20 every July 1 from 2011 until 2035.
~~~~ ~~~
That comes to roughly about $29,831,200.00 and he hasn't played in the Major Leagues since 2001.
I think the $1,193 Million the Mets will be paying Bonilla each year for 25 years will count towards the salaries paid all their players when computing the Luxury Tax.
July 30th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
Wow I wish I could leave my company and get paid 1/5th of my salary for the next 25 years!
These pay structures are crazy and surely going to cost someone big before too long?
Going back to A-Rod I can't believe he got a contract that agreed to pay him $20m at age 41 when that was 10 years away. I know he's good but he could be a complete liability by 2017.
July 30th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
Warren Buffett's magic pixie dust strikes again.
July 30th, 2010 at 9:07 pm
I think it really depends on how the deferred money works. What if the Mets invested that money, either financially or in talent elsewhere, to the point of profiting on the deferred payments? Pretty wise. Unlikely, especially seeing as how well the Mets do with investments lately (both on and off the field), but I'm sure there is the possibility of teams profiting off deferred payments.
July 30th, 2010 at 10:02 pm
Paying Alex Rodriguez 25 mil a year or Carlos Beltran 14mil a year doesn't hurt your team. Paying some random mid market guy who turns into a scrub $5 million hurts your team. A-Rod's contract was probably too high, but only because it's unlikely they couldn't have gotten him for less. In terms of the wins he got them per dollar, it was high but hardly unreasonable. He's put up 64.2 WAR over the course of the contract while getting paid 252mil, that's not much higher than average in terms of $/WAR. Now, the yankees extension is a bit more problematic. They'll do fine for a couple more years, but it's highly unlikely that his all-star to mvp level production will continue for another 6 years, and they need that level of production to justify what they are paying him.
I agree with you JT, I hope ARod gets his money, or if he doesn't, only because there's a legitimate inability to pay, not some legal fiction owner-class collusion bullshit. It's not like ARod will go hungry, but you can damn well bet that the owners who bankrupted the Rangers won't end up working at McDonalds either.
July 31st, 2010 at 9:10 am
From now on, I betcha their agents will insure any deferred payments will be listed as gauranteed in any future contracts. Why do they pay those attorney/agents so much anyway? Go Yanks!
August 4th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
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