New Owners, Less Debt Give Texas a Shot at Lee

Mike Segar/Reuters

Cliff Lee, who earned $9 million this year with  Seattle and Texas, is expected to land a multiyear deal worth $20  million a year.

By RICHARD SANDOMIR and KEN BELSON

They went from borrowing $40 million from Major League Baseball to stay  afloat to vowing to aggressively pursue their free-agent pitcher, Cliff  Lee, against certain competition from the Yankees.

Team ownership changed in August from Tom Hicks, who weighed down the  Rangers with debt that exceeded M.L.B.’s limits, to a group led by Nolan Ryan and Chuck Greenberg, who have a cleaner balance sheet because of the  bankruptcy and deep-pocketed investors backing them.

Bob Simpson, one of those investors, told The Fort Worth Star-Telegram  last week, “We’re going to go after Cliff Lee — hard, and we have the  financial firepower to do that.”

He added, “Guys like Josh Hamilton, we will take care of those guys.”

Now the question is whether a team that had the 26th-lowest opening day  payroll, at $55.2 million, truly has the wherewithal to match up against  bigger spenders like the Yankees, the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Angels.  The Rangers’ owners have room to add to their payroll, but will they do  it with an unwavering plan or will they execute it willy-nilly, as  Hicks did when he overpaid a megastar like Alex Rodriguez or over-the-hill players like Juan Gonzalez, Rafael Palmeiro and Chan Ho Park?

“They should be able to approach a $100 million payroll in two or three  years and still be fine,” said Marc Ganis, a sports industry consultant.  “But if they mistakenly try to be the Yankees, they will go into a  major economic slide. They could be a strong next-echelon team.”

The Rangers are certainly better positioned than they were recently  under Hicks. Simpson and Ray Davis, the other lead investor, say they  are willing to spend to maintain the team’s momentum —  and they are  free of Hicks’s massive debt load. Attendance at Rangers Ballpark  increased by 15.7 percent to 2.5 million this season, and the team will  get an extra revenue kick from postseason games.

Usually, a successful team that goes as far as the World Series can  expect increases in revenues from attendance, sponsorships, concessions  and suite rentals.

Vince Gennaro, a consultant to several major league teams, said:  “Drawing 2.8 million is very conservative. Three million is probably  more likely.” He said that after the Chicago White Sox won the 2005 World Series, their season ticket base nearly doubled to 25,000.

But the Rangers still owe $45 million to former players like Rodriguez  (they have already funded the liability, which Hicks did not) and took  on bank debt of about $189 million to buy the team.

One positive indicator of the Rangers’ future financial health was the  signing in late September of a contract worth $1.6 billion to $2 billion  with Fox Sports Southwest to carry the team’s games on cable for 20  years starting in 2015. According to several reports, the Rangers got  $80 million to $100 million upfront on a deal that will pay about $50  million to start, with payments rising incrementally each year.

But increased revenues from various sources might soon lead the Rangers  to start paying into baseball’s revenue sharing pool, rather than  receive payments, as they have the last two years.

The Rangers certainly seem poised to absorb the extra salary they will  have to pay Lee and Hamilton. Lee earned $9 million this year with  Seattle and Texas and will likely get a deal like the seven-year, $161  million contract that C. C. Sabathia signed with the Yankees in 2008.

Hamilton is not a free agent but is eligible for arbitration for the  second straight season. He avoided arbitration in 2010 and signed for  one year at $3.25 million. But he will probably double or triple that in  2011, especially if he is voted the American League’s most valuable  player.

“Lee’s a big-game pitcher and those pitchers command a high price,” said Jim Duquette, a former Mets general manager who is a commentator for Sirius XM Radio. “He has every  right to compare himself to C. C. but he probably won’t get that money,  or to what the Mets paid Santana,” he said, referring to Mets pitcher Johan Santana.

He said the Rangers could try to sign Hamilton to a long-term deal that  would take him past his first chance to be a free agent in 2013.

“Sometimes you can do something like that especially with where he’s  been in his life,” he said referring to Hamilton’s drug and alcohol  problems.

Beyond Lee, the Rangers do not have a lot of free agents due huge  contracts and could reduce their payroll if they buy out the mutual  option on Vladimir Guerrero, who would get $9 million next year.

Guerrero had a terrific regular season but faltered in the World Series.  Third baseman Michael Young, their highest-paid player at $13.2  million, is locked up through 2013; second baseman Ian Kinsler has a  contract through 2012; outfielder Nelson Cruz is now eligible for  arbitration but younger players who emerged this season, like relief  pitcher Neftali Perez and shortstop Elvis Andrus, are not.

The Rangers’ off-season might well be defined by whether they can keep Lee.

“There’s pressure on them,” Duquette said. “They gave up a lot of  talent, like Justin Smoak, to get him, so signing him would justify  giving up that talent.”

But the Yankees lurk with a reputation burnished for more than a decade  of signing the free agents they want. In 2008, they executed the sort of  triple play unimaginable to other teams: they signed Sabathia, Mark Teixeira and A. J. Burnett to more than $420 million in long-term contracts.

But if they signed Lee, who is 32, to a five-year contract at $20 million or more per season, Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman would be adding another aging, highly paid player. In 2013, for  instance, Sabathia (who last week had arthroscopic surgery on his right  knee) will turn 33; Derek Jeter will be 39; Mariano Rivera will be 43 and Rodriguez will be 38. Jeter and Rivera are heading into salary talks.

www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/sports/baseba...

Loving the Mullens story...Glad to see him land on his feet and be successful.

Nov 3, 2010 -- 7:56AM, hall4netls wrote:

Nov 3, 2010 -- 5:49AM, BigGuy wrote:

Yankees talk tough about contract with Derek Jeter, but are poised to throw millions at Cliff Lee

Mike Lupica

Wednesday, November 3rd 2010, 4:00 AM

Perlman/The Star-Ledger

Hal Steinbrenner is prepared for the Yankees to be competitive in the free agent market, but while he plans to operate within a budget for Derek Jeter (below), they sky's the limit for Cliff Lee.

Sipkin/News

Hal Steinbrenner, one of the Fabulous Boss Brothers, made a radio tour of New York on Tuesday, and one of the things he talked about was Derek Jeter's new contract. Steinbrenner praised Jeter as being one of the greatest Yankees of them all, but then added, "Hank (Steinbrenner) and I need to keep a level head and realize we're running a business here."

Ultimately, he said, he would have to do what was right for the "partnership." Clearly that doesn't mean just handing a blank check over to the captain of the Yankees after he hits .270, a number 45 points lower than his career average.

Clearly with the Yankees, signing aging superstars to ridiculous contracts that take them well past their 40th birthdays went out with, well, with Alex Rodriguez three years ago.

You remember that one, probably the way the Yankee partnership does. Rodriguez had opted out of his Yankee contract during the last game of the World Series. But then before you knew it, level-headed Hank Steinbrenner, only bidding against himself, had signed A-Rod to a brand-new contract that takes him to age 42 and might be worth $300 million in the end.

The Yankees are going to spend money this winter, because they always spend money in the winter, it's just a question of how much. But apparently they're not going to just throw it at Jeter. If they are going to throw $100 million on somebody, they'd much rather do that with Cliff Lee.

Here was Brian Cashman the other day before flying down to Tampa and finding out what his allowance from the Boss Brothers will be this winter:

"I think that if the pitching can be shored up it will be to our best interest."

"Shored up" in this case likely means overpaying Lee, who turns 33 in August, and became the most over-evaluated pitcher in history during the postseason that just ended. When it comes to the Yankees, "shored up" always means throwing big money at somebody else's best pitchers. And going back to 1995, it has put them in the postseason every year except one, so in that sense, it's working for them.

But in the last 10 years - as shored up as they've been - they've won the same amount of World Series as the Angels, Marlins, White Sox, Cardinals, Phillies and San Francisco Giants.

I said to someone in the Yankee organization on Tuesday: "Wait a second: You have to shore up the pitching two years after you signed Sabathia and Burnett for nearly a quarter of a billion?"

The guy said, "Only because we have to."

Two years after Sabathia and Burnett became No. 1 and No. 2 in the Yankee rotation, they apparently need Lee to be their No. 2. He stuffed them twice in the 2009 World Series, stuffed them again in Game 3 of the Yankees-Rangers series, now it's practically the civic duty of Hal, Hank, and Cashman, the cash man, to bring him to the new Yankee Stadium. Even if Lee doesn't look like the world's only unbeatable pitcher anymore, coming out of the postseason of 2010 with a 3-2 record and unable to keep poor old Edgar Renteria in the yard.

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I dont read alot of Lupica, I certainly wouldn't put alot of stock in anything he writes about Yanks

I mostly stopped reading Lupica too.   He's a Yankee hater.   I stopped buying the Daily News because of him and Maddon.  Let him stick for his Mets and Red Sox and whine all winter.   The only time he says anything good about the Yankees is if somebody has a gun to his head.