Amen, brother Sheehan. This is why I subscribe to BP.

Excellent piece, Joe.

Loria is a total scumbag. The way he swindled the people of Montreal makes me sick to this day. They actually believed he was there to save the team.

I don't know who you got into trouble with last month for calling the Marlins "a blight ..." but you shouldn't get in trouble for that. You're a baseball columnist, Joe, so it's your job to express opinions about baseball matters as long as you do so in a entertaining, persuasive and informed manner. I enjoy your columns but that doesn't mean that I or other readers should agree with 100% of your opinions.

Keep up the good work.

Well, if you're going to run a cut-rate franchise solely to profit off the largesse of the other owners the least you can do is send a team of mopes out there to get beat. They're the Washington Generals of MLB

Loria is to MLB what Don Sterling is to the NBA. Perhaps worse.

The whole thing is pretty horrendous. Great column, Mr. Sheehan.

Ummm. Not to interrupt the love fest, but I don't read anything at all into "departures" in the oh-so-offensive quote. Just means they're gone, is all. Especially appropriate in an AP release for which brevity is a virtue. Probably a requirement, actually.

No, I agree with Joe, and think the AP messed up here. One of the problems with American journalism is its tendency to hide behind the appearance of impartiality rather than attempt to tell what's really going on. That's in large measure how we've been able to avoid addressing global warming for so long: stories in which writers felt some need to include, "But not all scientists agree ..." In a world in which newspapers are dying out, the AP needs to address the idea of why people would pay money to read stories that actively avoid saying anything.

Yawn.

The franchise is a business and should be / is being run that way.

Dumping Nelson and signing Proctor to save $550k is the Yankees' fault. If the Yankees didn't spend so much money putting a championship team together, the Marlins would make better baseball decisions. Baseball needs a salary cap so cheapskates like Loria will spend more money to put a competitor on the field.

[Sarcasm off.]

But, Huckyoda, the point is that going from Nelson to Proctor is not a good _business_ decision.

It's well documented that winning games leads to revenue at measurable, marginal rates. The BP writers had a nice long piece on this in _Baseball Beyond The Numbers_. One can confidently say that the difference between Nelson and Proctor has a revenue value, and it's more than $500,000. I wouldn't mind seeing someone with a little more familiarity with the math and a little more time drawing it out like that.

I'm a fan of the Oakland Athletics, so I know the hard realities of not having a franchise with unlimited resources, but there are risks one takes to be competitive, that sometimes work and sometimes don't (Mulder trade yay, Hudson trade oops), and then there's just not paying attention to the larger picture in the name of making short term money.

That was a funny column, Joe. I'd love to see more humorous comments in your stuff, you've got a knack for them.

Joe, I'm with you about the Marlins essentially giving up, but I wonder if this example can carry the burden of supporting your essay's claim. Perhaps it's another data-point to consider, but middle relief, and its fungible nature, hardly seems to be significant enough a matter to carry the burden of damning the business and competitive practices of a franchise. (and, yeah, I know you say this in your intro, but you move from "a small matter" to "a big deal." And yes, I get that this is a pattern by Florida, but that's not your argument here, either).

Frankly, I just don't think that 54 innings by a 34 year-old guy who has only 100 innings in the majors is, well, even a small deal.

And then there's the Yankees, who get $450 million from the NY state taxpayers for their new stadium, but it's okay because they wasted $40 million on Carl Pavano in an attempt to win...

Relievers and bullpens are a crapshoot, as is repeated over and over on this site, and you're attributing motive to a baseball decision when you don't know all the circumstances. Maybe Nelson is a jerk in the clubhouse. Maybe the coaches can't work with him. Maybe the Marlins notice he doesn't take his conditioning seriously. Sure Proctor is probably a poor replacement, but he doesn't have to stay on the big league roster all year and pitch the 7th inning every game.

Give Loria a break, guys, Jeezum Cripes. Obviously he's scrimping and saving for his own stadium. If I can buy slightly irregular Hanes at TJ Maxx for $3.00, when Fruit of the Loom at Wal Mart is $4.50, I'm driving that extra 60 miles to get to TJ Maxx every time.

If I may stick up for the punching bag that is Scott Proctor; he pitched quite decently in September for the Dodgers after returning from injury (7 IP, 5 H, 2 BB, 10 Ks and 2 runs in his last 2 appearances). Granted, that's a very small sample size in mostly mop-up duty and the Dodgers didn't see fit to include him on their postseason roster. However, I believe that Proctor is a decent reclamation project, albeit maybe not one you want to guarantee money (The Marlins of all organizations). Which is not to say anything of his relative value compared to Joe Nelson.

If baseball had had a commissioner in 2002, the Expos would still be in Montreal and Loria would be off schlepping his Thomas Kinkades or whatever.

And Washington would still be without a team, which saddens me to think of, but would have been the most just outcome.

If Loria is pocketing money coming from the central fund, and Selig and the other owners are turning a blind eye and/or facilitating it, the blame should go further than Loria. Extorting tax payer money for a stadium isn't so bad as long as they don't get the money. It will be a shame if they do.

It is not a normal business in that they have anti-trust exemption from congress. What would Microsoft or Google or numerous other companies look like if they were given the right to put their competitors out of business using monopolistic practices. The fact is that Microsoft basically nurtured apple and is now facing real competition. In the context of the Marlins, ownership is getting rich based solely on the leagues anti-trust exemption. without it they would certainly fail.

"It does not, I should emphasize, reflect upon Larry Beinfest or the baseball operations staff, who have done yeoman's work under awful circumstances."

Any why not, Joe, isn't Larry ultimately the one making the day-to-day decisions on who to keep and who to sign? I know he works at the behest of ownership, but simply presenting the case you made here for keeping Nelson should have been sufficient even for a cheapskate.

Like any red-blooded baseball fan I'm not totally happy about the direction Loria has steered the Big Fish of late but it's unfair to single the Marlins out for punishment in a sport that also includes the Pirates and Royals. Neither has even made the postseason since the Marlins were established--and won two World Series.

Furthermore, the Pirates enjoy the advantages of over a century of continuous existence in the same city and the attendant deeply rooted fan loyalties and revenue streams. (I'm probably reaching here. I, like 330,000 of the Pitt's former residents over the past 50 years, haven't spent much time there.) More importantly, they play in one of the best ballparks in baseball--financed with taxpayers' money, of course.

When seemingly every other franchise--including those perennial paupers the Yankees--gets to treat municipal bond issues like GM treats its pension fund (topical!), can you really blame Loria for trying to do the same?

Of course we all want to live in a world were every team single-mindedly pursues championships at all costs. But baseball is business first and baseball second. Sure, I'd play for free, but you wouldn't find me mopping up the flooded urinals under the right field bleachers in Babe's crib for nothin'.

Nevertheless, not offerring a serviceable, underpriced reliever like Nelson arbitration and then turning around and signing Proctor is seemingly indefensible. I watched most of the 158 innings he threw with the Yankees in that one-and-a-half season stretch and that probably understates his mileage, given Bigelow Joe's adorable tendency to dry-hump him just about every other day. Then again, Proctor seems like a decent dude and he'll probably throw more innings than a certain petulant Arkansasian whose five year dower already feels like at least a mollymawk.

Speaking of penurious owners, I just saw that Carl Pohlad passed away at the age of 93. I wonder if he's going to have his $3.8 billion buried with him, for all the good it did the Twins.

Absolutely great column. How else can it be described if it made you read an entire article about Scott Proctor, Joe nelson and Doug Waechter

I don't think Loria should be blamed for responding to the incentives created by others. If Loria's "pocketing" baseball's redistributive payments is bad for baseball, then the responsibility falls to Selig and the owners to change the system. If Loria's attempts to "extort" Miami and Miami-Dade county would constitute bad policy, then it falls to the elected officials of those municipalities, and the voters who elect them, to put a stop to the practice.

I'm not saying that what Loria is doing is "right" (a question that's irrelevant in my view) but it seems foolish to focus on perfectly rational behavior, rather than on the structures that not only give rise to Loria's behavior, but would and will give rise to similar behavior by other actors present and future. The reason this is folly is that it creates the impression that the problem is some moral failing of Loria's when, in fact, the problem is of a different kind. If we focus only on Loria, we don't fix the bigger issue.

I have a soft spot for Scott Proctor. The guy is/could've been a fairly useful reliever. Torre wrecked his arm (and also misused him situationally such that his value wasn't what it could've been... for instance, you do not let SP pitch to Manny. You just don't.). So good luck in FLA, Scotty P.

As for the Marlins ownership,yeah, sure, and yet... they've won. Recently. Twice. That complicates my impulse to condemn their practices. As for extortion of taxpayer money for a stadium... um, that's MLB ownership 101.

I think the last thing we're forgetting here is that player's stats are notorious for, you know, not being the same in two consecutive years.

The Marlins are becoming the real life version of "Major League" except without the happy ending. Loria conned & screwed Montreal out of the Expos and are now doing the same thing in Florida with the Marlins--that he hasn't been turfed out of the MLB is total crime against baseball fans everywhere.