Meet the Giants new largest stakeholder

Larry Baer may be the face of the ownership group but he is far from the largest shareholder in the team and that means that he must answer to the people that ultimately control the team.

Well today Mark Purdy of the Mercury News has a story introducing us to the man that is now the main guy in charge. Giants fans meet Charles Johnson.

There isn't a lot to give us an idea of what it means for the Giants in the future expect for that he was one of the people that helped push out Bill Nuekom. Here is some of the background from Purdy's story:

Johnson, according to Forbes magazine, is among the world's 250 richest people. The co-chairman and co-founder of the Franklin Resources financial mega-firm is worth an estimated $4.4 billion...

He is 78 years old. He is chairman and co-founder of Franklin Resources, the investment and mutual fund giant. Johnson and his wife, Ann, have been longtime Bay Area philanthropists. They live on the peninsula.

That's about it in terms of biographical information.

It is still too early how things under the new regime will turn out but I can't say that I am thrilled with how things are starting (can you say rainy day fund). With this information we will at least now have an idea of how is behind the spin machine that is Baer.

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Giants Claim Poverty but Something Smells Fishy

The Giants are claiming poverty as the reason that they won't be active in the free agent market this off season. They are claiming that they need to save up for lean times that may be coming in the future.

I am calling baloney.

I did a bit of reverse engineering of the Forbes Revenue estimate over the last few years and based on what I can determine the Giants are doing pretty darn well.

The latest Forbes estimates are for last season and they pegged the Giants as the 7th highest revenue team with estimated revenues of about $230 million. With last year being a banner year for the team in merchandising and selling tickets my reverse engineering would guesstimate they had revenues of around $250-265 million last season which would put them on par with the Cubs and just behind the Red Sox.

If we take 2004 as an example of some of the World Series after glow rubbing off and assume that this season we see a bit of a drop in attendance and the strong ratings take a bit of a hit overall revenue should be roughly flat from this season with the increased prices canceling out the lower attendance.

So how is it that these teams with lower revenues can afford to have larger payrolls and the Giants for some reason can't?

There is no reason other than the owners of this team are taking the extra cash for themselves instead of using it to put a better product on the field.

Remember that when the Giants fail to resign Carlos Beltran.

Remember that when the Giants don't sign a "big name free agent" this off season to improve the historically bad offense.

Remember that when Tim Lincecum/Matt Cain are leaving in free agency in a couple of seasons.

It is the team's owners prerogative to keep all the money they want but when they go about claiming that they need to have a strict budget and therefore can't afford so and so I have no problem calling it what it is.

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