Everyone is yelling at the Marlins; the A's might be collateral damage; and Chief Inspector Bud Selig is on the case. A look at the aftermath to our MLB Confidential series.
• Miami-Dade County Commissioner Rebecca Sosa wants the Marlins to spend more of their own money on the team's boondoggly new stadium.
• Meanwhile, Yahoo!'s Jeff Passan calls down the thunder: "The swindlers who run the Florida Marlins got exposed Monday. They are as bad as anyone on Wall Street, scheming, misleading and ultimately sticking taxpayers with a multibillion-dollar tab. Corporate fraud is alive and well in Major League Baseball."
• "In the end, the Pirates can spend a lot of money on player salaries, or they can turn a profit," Phil Birnbaum argues in Slate. "They can't do both."
• A CPA mostly agrees, but he adds that owners "aren't concerned about profits as long as their team can cash flow itself each year and maybe have to borrow a little to fund operations." He writes: "Because of the way the value of sports franchises generally appreciates each year in the marketplace, each owner is in it for the holy grail and that is to sell the team eventually when they realize very nice capital gains."
• The Business Insider's Adam Fusfeld says something or other about the Pirates.
• SI.com's Joe Sheehan points to the screwy incentives of the revenue-sharing system: "When you base revenue sharing on actual revenues, you incentivize sloth and aggressively diminish a franchise's motivation to move upward, as gains in revenue will be offset initially by lost welfare payments. It's a zero-sum game — one the Pirates elected not to play."
• Maury Brown wonders what the leaks mean for the future of revenue sharing.
• Buster Olney thinks the A's, who have been rattling the tin cup for a new stadium for years, will now be "held to a higher standard of transparency." (Sub. required)
• The MLB Stasi is pulling off fingernails and throwing people against walls.
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