So, with them KNOWING they were hundreds of millions in debt (or maybe a little less than that around 2014/15 or so), BOTH OF THEM. FLAT. OUT. LIED. in order to let these criminals continue to own the team.
" In a spirited defense of Mets ownership Tuesday, commissioner Rob Manfred questioned the fairness of criticism about the team's sagging payroll in the wake of the Bernie Madoff financial scandal."
MLB loaned the owners $25 million in 2011, then approved a bridge loan from Bank of America in Nov. 2011 (with the loan from MLB past due), right around the time the team was pretending it could afford Jose Reyes.
"I dont have any concerns," Selig said in Oct. 2011. "I do have a lot of concerns but I am happy to say the Mets arent one of them."
His answer on McCourt, in that same story, was a bit briefer.
"We are in litigation," he said.
He's also issued a series of anodyne responses, variations on the "No concerns" theme, to any question about Mets finances ever since. When the lawsuit against Wilpon and Katz, brought by the trustee for the Bernie Madoff victims, settled in 2012 because the trustee determined that ownership was out of money?
"I have a lot of faith in the Wilpons."
When the team continued cutting payroll, landing them among the bottom fifth of teams, and borrowed additional money against their stake in SNY just to finance debt accrued by their parent company, Sterling Equities?
"I have no concerns about the Mets."
But of course, there's having no concerns about the ownership group surviving, something that happens when an unprecedented doubling of SNY's value over the past two years allows for more borrowing (also approved by MLB), and there's concern about how diverting that money away from the team itself, and to ownership's hungry creditors, serves anybody other than Wilpon and Katz. It shouldn't matter a bit to Selig how Wilpon and Katz survive financially he's the commissioner of baseball, not the commissioner of Sterling Equities.
Or as it he put it, when he stepped in and took control of the Dodgers from McCourt, his concern should be "to protect the best interests of the club."
Still, he said back in May, when he denied the New York Times story that Katz wanted out, and the Mets are hemorrhaging money: "Major League Baseball has all the economic information. This idea that I should have reason to be concerned is just wrong."
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~Wigs~ 3-Time Consecutive Fantasy B8 Baseball Champion 2015 NATIONAL LEAGUE CHAMPION NEW YORK METS