Yeah, the Marlins scammed us all.  Again.

If ever there was an owner who baseball really should remove for the good of the game, it’s Jeffery Loria.  He’s the kind of billionaire who gives con men a bad name.

At this point it’s just embarrassing.  Loria decimated, then abandoned the Expos franchise to fend for itself in Montreal after cutting payroll, scouting and minor league spending to the point that the franchise essentially had to be reconstructed from the ground up after his tenure. Amazingly Bud Selig and the owners then allowed him to buy another franchise, one in which they thought should be a lucrative baseball market and baseball’s other 29 owners purchased the Expos from Loria.

In return Loria gave them the finger.  When he left Montreal back in 2001, with $120 million buyout, he walked out the door with just about everything but the players themselves.  He took the entire management, coaching staff, all of the scouting reports, even the office computers and equipment, leaving behind no one who knew anything about the organization, no records and clearly no hope for rescuing what had once been a solid franchise.

In Florida Loria and his mouthpiece/stepson David Samson became known for two things: whining about breaking even and even losing money and trading off players who could command decent salaries.  The sad thing is everyone believed the financial claims, which later proved to be untrue.  The Marlins were turning a profit between $20-40 million per year. Yet the Marlins milked that falsehood for all it was worth, taking revenue sharing money that was not invested back into the roster and bilking the citizens of south Florida into financing a stadium in a sweetheart deal for Loria.

He did so at a time when the county was cutting jobs, closing schools and struggling economically.  And almost everything at the new ballpark was financed with public money in a deal in which the public didn’t even get to vote on. 

How bad is it?  That monstrosity with the whirling marlins out in left center field was paid for, all $2.5 million, by the county’s art in public places commission, as was another $2.8 million dollars worth of art at the ballpark.

Paid for with taxpayer money.

Photo by Dan Lundberg, used under creative commons license.

So you’d think Loria would at least keep a decent product on the field.  To be fair, we can’t blame him for the disaster that the 2012 Marlins have been.  He went out and spent some money on big name, high reliability players who simply haven’t lived up to their billing.  That said, Loria decided to walk away from competitiveness not even four months into the era of his new ballpark.

Once again the Marlins are holding a fire sale and if they can deal Hanley Ramirez and Anibal Sanchez, then nobody is safe.  By Tuesday the team might ostensibly be without its ace pitcher Josh Johnson, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if other members of the starting staff and some of the big name free agents signed this past offseason (possibly Jose Reyes, who was bilked into believing he was moving to a contender) are unloaded in cost cutting measures.

Loria and Samson say that attendance hasn’t been enough to justify expenses, but they knew that it wasn’t likely going in.  Attendance is up by a third over last year.  And while 27,000 a game isn’t exactly knocking them dead -- it’s 18th in baseball -- the Marlins are still making money.

But Jeffery Loria knows he can make money even with a bad team.  He’s done it for most of a decade already as the Marlins owner.  If the county and the taxpayers get screwed financially he’s ok with that.  If the fans, including those who bought season tickets, are screwed over by having a non-competitive team, he’s OK with that too.  Loria is waiting for the big payday -- seven more years down the road when the television rights for the team can be renegotiated at modern rates.

That’s the big money in the game today.  You can bet that Loria will dress up the team with big name stars for a season or two before those negotiations take place.  After all he’ll want to bilk the local TV networks for everything he can get.

After all why should they be any different from all the others, including the other owners he’s dealt with since he entered baseball?

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