Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Two McCourt sons are on the payroll--do we care?

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Last week, amidst all that hubbub about silent partners and shady cash movement, it was noted that the two McCourt sons, Drew and Travis, were on the Dodgers' payroll to the tune of $600,000 per year combined. Drew is 28, Travis 27. As of last fall, Drew was attending business school at Stanford and Travis worked at Goldman Sachs in New York.

Jamie's divorce filings include the couple's budget for supporting the children, including a substantial amount allocated to Drew and Travis, both earning Dodgers paychecks. I'm reluctant to get into too much depth about the McCourt children's expenses and lifestyles, as that has little to do with the Dodgers. What's more, Frank and Jamie willingly invited a high level of scrutiny when they bought a baseball team. The McCourt kids didn't have the luxury of choice. But their positions with the club are certainly on topic.

To tell the truth, I'm just not that outraged about this $600,000 per year. Yes, that's a decent draft pick or a player earning the minimum salary. And it's true: every little bit counts. It's difficult to hear about the Dodgers' plans to keep payroll near or below current levels when these sorts of expenses persist. There's a strong urge to lash out at the roster construction when it's so abundantly clear that a moderate budget for players is a choice, not a necessity.

But like I said, I'm having a tough time drumming up the anger on this one. To me, the bigger problem isn't the $600,000 to Drew and Travis, but what it says about the team's attitude toward expenses generally. Jamie's filings allege that a great deal of the couple's luxurious lifestyle was funded directly by the Dodgers. Essentially, the line between Dodgers finances and McCourt finances was, at best, blurry. Having two of the McCourt children on the payroll despite full-time obligations to other callings is more of the same. The $600,000 annually won't be missed, but it raises questions about efficiency throughout the rest of the organization. And at a time when the club's owner pleads poverty and the payroll budget is shockingly low for a major market, those questions matter.
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11 comments:

  1. I don't think anybody's anger is towards the 600k wasted.

    My anger, and the people I talk to about it, are just frustrated that they are unethically paying their kids 600k for nothing. Just because.

    Like a taxpayer being angry about the government scandal embezzling 1 million dollars or something. In the grand scheme of things, a drop in the bucket, but disgusting nevertheless.

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  2. No doubt. But I'm not sure I wouldn't do the same for my kids if I could.

    No one would care about this sort of thing if there wasn't already a perception that the Dodgers are cheap on payroll but careless about everything else.

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  3. Exactly, Josh.

    The McCourts continue not to spend internationally and in the draft, making Logan White make specious lies to cover for them. Meantime they do everything they can to unload quality prospects in order to save money.

    If the current young core doesn't start winning soon, this team is in for a long stretch of suck.

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  4. Rob, I had a long discussion with someone about that today. The system is thin. What if the club doesn't pay Ethier, Billingsley, Kemp, and Kershaw? This could get ugly fast.

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  5. I don't think you even have to go that far.

    Say they only pay two of the four, or three. (I would bet Kemp doesn't get re-upped because of management recalcitrance, and possibly legitimate declines in his glove making him an early candidate for a DH job, assuming Al Yellon is wrong about the National League adopting the DH rule by 2012.) Who else do they get to fill in the other positions? Long discussion there, but this looks like a possible team adrift, unless one of the consequences of the next round of labor talks results in a true, hard slotting system in the draft.

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  6. Which, in theory, ought to *hurt* a wealthy team like the Dodgers. Sigh.

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  7. I guess I don't understand why giving them an extra 600k annually is necessary when their parents are already multi-millionaires. :o

    Then again, i'm not a multi-millionaire, so I will never understand their thinking.

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  8. And people wonder why we haven't gotten Roy Oswalt already.

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  9. Rob- I don't see Kemp as being so defensively inept as to need to DH earlier than later. I mean, if Manny can be put in left, why couldn't Kemp move to a corner spot IF NECESSARY?

    Anyways, I think he'll be fine in center as it is.

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