Arte Opposes Raising Luxury Tax

[Capital_Dave]

Four teams voted against Steve Cohen as the new owner of the Mets, presumably because he'd spend too much money: Angels, Diamondbacks, Reds, White Sox. 

Now there's this:

3 of the same 4 teams.  Welcome to the Asshole Caucus.

[Make Angels Great Again]

Acting like this is a shitty stance to take is brain dead.

[Dtwncbad]

57 minutes ago, Capital_Dave said:

Four teams voted against Steve Cohen as the new owner of the Mets, presumably because he'd spend too much money: Angels, Diamondbacks, Reds, White Sox. 

Now there's this:

3 of the same 4 teams.  Welcome to the Asshole Caucus.

Believing or expecting that all 30 owners would or should have the same philosophy on what the threshold should be is ridiculous.

The owners themselves are “United” as long as 23 of the 30 agree.

That leaves room for up to 7 to disagree.

Put your thinking cap on now.

If you expect all 30 to agree (rather than the owners being ok approving a number that up to 7 object to), then the threshold would be lower not higher.

You should applaud the owners for being this flexible.

Edited March 4, 2022 by Dtwncbad

[Capital_Dave]

9 minutes ago, Dtwncbad said:

If you expect all 30 to agree (rather than the owners being ok approving a number that up to 7 object to), then the threshold would be lower not higher.

You should applaud the owners for being this flexible.

We really do need sarcasm punctuation.  I have no idea if you're serious about this.

Applaud the owners?  Seriously?  

The owners have been ridiculously recalcitrant throughout this whole negotiation... and we are fans of one of the three teams that are the baddest of the bad guys in this labor dispute.  It's not a good feeling.

[Dtwncbad]

2 minutes ago, Capital_Dave said:

We really do need sarcasm punctuation.  I have no idea if you're serious about this.

Applaud the owners?  Seriously?  

The owners have been ridiculously recalcitrant throughout this whole negotiation... and we are fans of one of the three teams that are the baddest of the bad guys in this labor dispute.  It's not a good feeling.

I asked you to put your thinking cap on to understand the point.

You evidently can’t find it.

[DMVol]

I am not in the anti-Arte camp.....he is willing to spend, and I remember Jackie Autry and Disney.....but the problem isn't the luxury tax threshold or Steve Cohen.....the  problem is God awful management since Stoneman....some of that, of course,  is attributable to Arte...

[T.G.]

Our first clue that Moreno wasn't necessarily the best of owners came in an article by Scott Miller of CBS Sports in 2013 about the 2012 season

Excerpt:

Since his first full year as owner of the Angels in 2004, Moreno has fired close to 40 members of the front office, baseball operations department and scouting and medical staffs. The Angels maintain a skeletal front-office staff in many areas, and one of the leanest game-day staffs in all of baseball. If someone is let go, there often is no replacement hired. Moreno is said to gouge hours from his low-paid employees.

As for the club being on-deck to miss the playoffs for a fourth consecutive year, many in the organization thought the team needed more pitching help rather than Pujols during the winter of 2011-2012 when Moreno decided on the Cardinals free agent. After all, the Angels at that point already had a slugging first baseman in Kendrys Morales.

Last winter, many key members of the baseball operations department wanted to make more of an effort to re-sign Zack Greinke, but it was Moreno who steered them to free agent Josh Hamilton.

Though he has spent millions on players, including a record $153 million on this year’s payroll, many people both inside and outside of the Angels organization agree that Moreno’s reign of terror has created obstacles not only impossible for the club to overcome, but ones that have shifted the Angels into reverse.

When the decision was made to pursue Vernon Wells from Toronto before the 2011 season, a move Scioscia is said to have endorsed, it was Moreno, one source says, who threatened then-GM Tony Reagins with a firing if Reagins didn’t consummate the deal within 24 hours. Moreno is described as being chapped at having lost free agent Adrian Beltre to the Rangers roughly two weeks earlier, and that helps explain why, in an agreement that utterly stunned almost everybody in the game, the Angels agreed to pay all but $5 million of the $86 million to a player that Toronto was so eager to offload that the Jays surely could have been persuaded to pay millions more.

“Arte needs to stay out of the baseball business,” one baseball person says. “Arte thinks he knows the game. He doesn’t know the game. He only knows the money, the business side.”

 

The whole article is pretty interesting... and this was written in 2013.  Nine years later... well, things haven't gotten any better.

Edited March 4, 2022 by True Grich

[T.G.]

BTW... when I saw the title of this thread, I thought it was going to be about Canadians.

[TroutBaseball]

We all thought he would spend if he didn't have to pay the tax.  That doesn't appear to be the case.

Quote

"Ilitch was one of four owners against the offer, along with Bob Castellini (Cincinnati Reds), Ken Kendrick (Arizona Diamondbacks) and Arte Moreno (Los Angeles Angels), according to The Athletic's Evan Drellich."

https://sports.yahoo.com/detroit-tigers-owner-christopher-ilitch-150951146.html?src=rss

[Dtwncbad]

35 minutes ago, DMVol said:

I am not in the anti-Arte camp.....he is willing to spend, and I remember Jackie Autry and Disney.....but the problem isn't the luxury tax threshold or Steve Cohen.....the  problem is God awful management since Stoneman....some of that, of course,  is attributable to Arte...

Exactly. Arte’s opinion of where the luxury tax should sit is about the least important detail I can think of in assessing him as an owner.

[Blarg]

All raising the cap does is putting top tier free agents further out of reach for most markets, including the Angels and raises the second tier up a notch. It doesn't improve the game. 

[T.G.]

Just to be clear, I'm not necessarily anti-Moreno.  Whether or not he sells the team isn't relevant to me because it's something that's totally out of my control.  Him being the owner doesn't impact my fandom.  Yes, I have reservations about him and tons of questions about the decisions he makes, but at the end of the day - it doesn't matter that much to me.  I am not going to pretend that I know his mindset.  I don't.  I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe he wants to win, but I just question the way he's gone about trying to accomplish that. 

I'm still an Angels fan, but I'm not necessarily a Moreno fan. And again, I'm not necessarily anti-Moreno. That might not make sense... I'm an Angels fan first... everything else is kind of just noise.

Edited March 4, 2022 by True Grich

[Taylor]

30 minutes ago, True Grich said:

Our first clue that Moreno wasn't necessarily the best of owners came in an article by Scott Miller of CBS Sports in 2013 about the 2012 season

Excerpt:

Since his first full year as owner of the Angels in 2004, Moreno has fired close to 40 members of the front office, baseball operations department and scouting and medical staffs. The Angels maintain a skeletal front-office staff in many areas, and one of the leanest game-day staffs in all of baseball. If someone is let go, there often is no replacement hired. Moreno is said to gouge hours from his low-paid employees.

As for the club being on-deck to miss the playoffs for a fourth consecutive year, many in the organization thought the team needed more pitching help rather than Pujols during the winter of 2011-2012 when Moreno decided on the Cardinals free agent. After all, the Angels at that point already had a slugging first baseman in Kendrys Morales.

Last winter, many key members of the baseball operations department wanted to make more of an effort to re-sign Zack Greinke, but it was Moreno who steered them to free agent Josh Hamilton.

Though he has spent millions on players, including a record $153 million on this year’s payroll, many people both inside and outside of the Angels organization agree that Moreno’s reign of terror has created obstacles not only impossible for the club to overcome, but ones that have shifted the Angels into reverse.

When the decision was made to pursue Vernon Wells from Toronto before the 2011 season, a move Scioscia is said to have endorsed, it was Moreno, one source says, who threatened then-GM Tony Reagins with a firing if Reagins didn’t consummate the deal within 24 hours. Moreno is described as being chapped at having lost free agent Adrian Beltre to the Rangers roughly two weeks earlier, and that helps explain why, in an agreement that utterly stunned almost everybody in the game, the Angels agreed to pay all but $5 million of the $86 million to a player that Toronto was so eager to offload that the Jays surely could have been persuaded to pay millions more.

“Arte needs to stay out of the baseball business,” one baseball person says. “Arte thinks he knows the game. He doesn’t know the game. He only knows the money, the business side.”

 

The whole article is pretty interesting... and this was written in 2013.  Nine years later... well, things haven't gotten any better.

Yeah, this is the kind of stuff that unfortunately proves the "Arte is cheap" narrative. He'll open his wallet for big flashy FA signings (almost all of which have been gigantic busts), but quietly in the background he fires the people who will ensure the long-term success of the organization. 

[TroutBaseball]

The cap is a defacto salary cap, and it's not even meeting inflation, which means the actual buying power of their salaries is going down.

[Lou]

12 minutes ago, Taylor said:

Yeah, this is the kind of stuff that unfortunately proves the "Arte is cheap" narrative. He'll open his wallet for big flashy FA signings (almost all of which have been gigantic busts), but quietly in the background he fires the people who will ensure the long-term success of the organization. 

No, it doesn't.

[T.G.]

13 minutes ago, Taylor said:

Yeah, this is the kind of stuff that unfortunately proves the "Arte is cheap" narrative. He'll open his wallet for big flashy FA signings (almost all of which have been gigantic busts), but quietly in the background he fires the people who will ensure the long-term success of the organization. 

Cheap? I don't think so.  Not great at building a winning baseball franchise? Perhaps.

[Dtwncbad]

Arte is “cheap”?   Compared to what?

The only fair comparison is to other owners.

He is consistently is among the biggest spenders.  He is competing with the other big spenders.

The level of spending among the big spenders (the not cheap owners) in aggregate is influenced by the level of the luxury tax.

The only fair conclusion to be made by the information we have is that Arte is absolutely not cheap, but he is interested in having a mechanism in the system to have some control over the level of spending among the not cheap owners (including him) he is competing with.

[Taylor]

7 minutes ago, True Grich said:

Cheap? I don't think so.  Not great at building a winning baseball franchise? Perhaps.

I guess it depends on your definition of cheap. Maybe cheap isn't the right word. 

[Blarg]

22 minutes ago, TroutBaseball said:

The cap is a defacto salary cap, and it's not even meeting inflation, which means the actual buying power of their salaries is going down.

You do realize the buying power of the lowest paid MLB player is about 6 times your buying power? None of these players are facing poverty once they hit the majors. If they last 3-5 years they probably make what you do in a lifetime. Fletcher, in the short time he has been a full time player has banked about $3 million dollars in 4 seasons and his current contract will net him around $22.5. Juan Lagares bounced around, no where near a top tier player, has amassed over $23 million hitting below league average. 

So don't talk about not meeting inflation when their salaries have nothing to do with cost of living indexes. 

[Dtwncbad]

2 minutes ago, Blarg said:

You do realize the buying power of the lowest paid MLB player is about 6 times your buying power? None of these players are facing poverty once they hit the majors. If they last 3-5 years they probably make what you do in a lifetime. Fletcher, in the short time he has been a full time player has banked about $3 million dollars in 4 seasons and his current contract will net him around $22.5. Juan Lagares bounced around, no where near a top tier player, has amassed over $23 million hitting below league average. 

So don't talk about not meeting inflation when their salaries have nothing to do with cost of living indexes. 

Have you not noticed the difference in price between the Honda Accord Sport and Sport Special Edition is now almost $1,600?

[Erstad Grit]

I disagree with players here. 

They state that superstars are paid well, but they want to raise the floor. 

Raising the "cap" could essentially just pay the top tier players more. 

I respect the players more if they were advocating a minimum team budget. 

[halonatic13]

14 minutes ago, Erstad Grit said:

I respect the players more if they were advocating a minimum team budget. 

That's it right there.  Having owners/players agree to that would benefit the FANS.  The way it should be.

[Erstad Grit]

8 minutes ago, halonatic13 said:

That's it right there.  Having owners/players agree to that would benefit the FANS.  The way it should be.

We're getting Avolios tonight! 

[CanadianHalo]

Everyone and their dog is dragging Arte on Twitter. Love it.

Rough day for the Arte stans on AW

[rottiesworld]

I’m tired of these damn players wanting more and more money. I wish they could be out here and making 2,000 dollars a month and see how it feels. There are people out here that can’t afford to by things they need or want and can’t have unlike these little crying bitches. They have a nice mansion like house with theater in them, bowling, tennis and basketball court. They have like 3 cars Lamborghini and other expensive cars and they cry like they need more money. They need a cap and stop this crap where trams can’t afford to get great players.