Tag: Arte Moreno

Angels owner Arte Moreno’s potential sale of team sparked so much speculation about Shohei Ohtani

This could be HUGE.

Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno announced on Tuesday that he will explore a possible sale of the team, and the implications for Major League Baseball are already looking enormous.

Moreno purchased the Angels back in 2003 from Disney for around $180 million. And despite putting together a stunning 20-year run of mediocrity (two playoff series wins since 2003 and no playoff appearance since 2014) and dishing out terrible contracts, the team’s value has skyrocketed to $2.2 billion.

The Angels also have two generational talents on roster in Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. Trout is under team control until 2030 after signing a 12-year, $426.5 million deal. But Ohtani’s future with the Angels could become even murkier with new ownership as he nears his final season of team control.

Ahead of the trade deadline, Ohtani’s name was floated in trade rumors. But aside from some MLB Network speculation, no legitimate effort to trade Ohtani was reported.

If Moreno ends up following through with the sale, the entire calculus of the Angels’ plans for Ohtani could change. Is he going to sign a massive extension to stay or will this green light an Ohtani trade? As expected, MLB fans were already dreaming of Ohtani leaving the Angels.

Angels owner should be humiliated by report that Albert Pujols is paying team’s Dominican staffers

This should be absolutely humiliating for Arte Moreno, the billionaire team owner of the Angels.

The Los Angeles Times reported this week that Albert Pujols, the Angels’ first baseman, is singlehandedly paying all the team’s employees in the Dominican Republic while they are on furlough due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Pujols will pay $180,000 out of pocket to the staffers to cover five months of lost wages, according to the report.

In the Times story and the ESPN story about this, they made sure to note how much money Albert Pujols has earned in his career. Neither of the stories, however, mentioned the net worth of the Angels’ owner, Arte Moreno.

I think this is relevant information to this story.

Albert Pujols is playing out a $240 million contract, but there are taxes and such, and his net worth was most recently estimated to sit at $170 million by The Richest. Arte Moreno is worth $3.3 billion, according to Forbes.

For most of us, those are both just huge numbers. But a quick bit of napkin math tell you: Pujols’ net worth is basically 5% of Moreno’s. Pujols is one of the most well paid athletes in baseball history and Moreno has 95% more net worth than he does.

And Pujols is the one picking up the tab for people that … Moreno employs.

Forget shaming owners, or trying to appeal to their empathy or morality. It’s really hard to make a billion dollars if you truly care about other people. This should just be embarrassing for Moreno as a rich guy. He’s letting one of his employees pick up the tab.

Moreno, the head honcho, the guy running the show, is letting one of his workers bail him out because he’s too cheap to do it himself.

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