At the time, Finley was attempting to sell off most (if not all) of his top stars in order to avoid losing them via the new phenomenon called “free agency”. Finley was attempting to receive some measure of compensation rather than lose his best players for essentially nothing. Kuhn nixed the transactions — citing the league’s interest in maintaining competitive balance — as being detrimental to the game’s interests.

Finley later filed a lawsuit against Kuhn but lost when the US Seventh Circuit Court determined that — as league commissioner duly appointed by the MLB owners with the power of oversight — Kuhn indeed had the authority to block the transactions.

He’s the dick that is going to get in his own way and he may have just fucked the whole show up all on his own all the while thinking he was such a hero.

Bud Selig sucks.

Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.

The situation in Minnesota is a similar although far less egregious. After two years at Target Field, the Twins are not competitive and payroll is shrinking. With their situation, they have committed money to some decent players–they were basically forced to commit 20-25% of their payroll to Mauer or face a anti-Loriaesque revolt from fans–but all of the players they invest heavily in seem to get injured. Their once serviceable rotation was also ravaged by injuries and ineffectiveness. When you know you aren’t going to be competitive, it does make sense to dump your expensive quality players in an attempt to build for the future. As Dayton Moore is proving in KC, “trusting the process” becomes very difficult when it is protracted over a decade. For the Twins, maybe now 3 years after the new stadium, with a shitty team, it makes sense to build for the future. In Miami, one year after, not so much…

“..or they begin to move to a straight Moneyball operation,”

“…an obvious abuse of MLB’s relationships with the communities they operate in.”

To be perfectly honest, it shouldn’t matter at this point. There’s been other instances of owners getting in over their heads (the Chicago Cubs last decade spring to mind), but usually in those cases they either sell or they begin to straight Moneyball operation, cleaning out their rosters every couple of seasons to clear salary space and relying on their farm systems to remain somewhat competitive. But Loria isn’t really doing either. He’s not going to sell, and he really doesn’t have a plan or management structure in place that’s necessary to run a Moneyball team. He went all in last year, making bigtime free agent signings to justify the new stadium being handed to him. Now, after a single bad season, he has off loaded those same free agents and cut his roster salary to ridiculous levels. In a vacuum, the trade looks like a normal firesale–overpaid veterans exchanged for promising prospect talent, which is the main reason why the trade won’t be and shouldn’t be blocked. But taken in the context of when those veterans were signed, the new publicily funded stadium to generate revenue, the ownership’s instance on competing right up until the moment the trade was made, the abnormally extreme lengths of the salary cuts…this has become an obvious abuse of MLB’s relationships with the communities .

And that’s why Selig needs to step in, regardless of his support of Loria in the past. What Loria has done to MLB is that he’s pretty much spoiled any trust between the league and public officials. Yeah, there are plenty of other instances of encouraging franchises to get publically funded stadiums. But those deals differ from city to city, and not every franchise got their community to foot the majority of the bill, and some have justified the risk. With this latest firesale and the timing of it, Loria has completely abused the privilege, and if Selig allows Loria to continue to operate, the spector of Marlins Park will be, and should be, raised whenever a team requests public funding for a new park.

Stopping the trade punishes the Jays and helps the Yankees and Red Sox. MLB screwed Montreal and now some people want MLB to screw Toronto. Come off it. A last place team traded highly paid players for decent prospects. Case closed.

You wouldn’t be so blase about it if this were the Orioles or Red Sox. Tell me you’re not biased.