Does Rob Manfred lie about the Marlins acquisition?
The other day MLB commissioner Rob Manfred was interviewed by ESPN’s Dan Le Batard. Like many Marlins fans, Le Batard is furious about how the Marlins hold another fire sale. He clearly suspects Manfred to have known about the new ownership group’s plans when they acquired the team from Jeffrey Loria.
In a radio interview, Le Batard fired some questions at Manfred. Rather soon the conversation started to get ugly as you can see in the video below.
Le Batard doesn’t understand how Manfred could approve the sale of the Marlins without knowing about the plans of the new ownership group. According to Manfred decisions like the Giancarlo Stanton trade are operating decisions in which he is not involved. Manfred stated MLB only looks to the business plans of the future owners, so how they will run their business. And that may be the tricky point here.
If a money-strapped ownership group wants to buy a club for $1.2 billion, they will have to take desperate measures to get into black figures again. You can wonder if the Marlins were worth $1.2 billion but the new owners were willing to pay that amount.
According to the Miami Herald, two people directly involved in the sales process said that Jeter and Sherman were required to tell other owners their intentions with payroll during the approval process, and that they informed the other owners that payroll would be cut from $115 million to the $85 million to $90 million range, with $85 million used at times and $90 million other times in those discussions. So if the owners did know the intentions of the future owners, you can wonder if Manfred didn’t know as he is in close contact with them in cases like this. Manfred insisted he and MLB are only looking to the long-term impact on teams in case of a sale, not to possible trades of acquisitions of players.https://wordpress.com/post/dutchbaseballhangout.wordpress.com/51910
A source directly involved in the Marlins sales process, after hearing the Le Batard interview, said, through a text message: “Commissioner said was not aware of [Jeter] 
plan to slash payroll. Absolutely not true. They request and receive the operating plan from all bidders.”
It is understandable that Marlins fans, who endured fire sales, trading big-name players and an owner who did not care about winning, are furious about this payroll slashing move by the new owners but it is clear the club is in financial trouble and the owners want (need) to build a new team from scratch.
What is more serious is that Rob Manfred may have lied about his knowledge of these plans. A scandal in the making?