Offers for team about equal, Manfred says
MIAMI– Asthe sale of the MiamiMarlins inches closer to a resolution, MLB Commissioner RobManfred said Tuesday that the three bidders are at about the same level in terms of price.
Negotiations and legal processes continue to play out, and soon it’ll be up to owner Jeffrey Loria to choose an offer — and his successor, who will then define the track the franchise takesmoving forward.
In the home clubhouse at Marlins Park on Tuesday afternoon, Loria was uninterested in discussing the topic, going as far as to pretendhehadn’tbeeninvolved in negotiations for months and that a sale, which club president David Samson said is happening, was not a given.
“Don’t ask me because I don’t have anything to say,” Loria said. “No comment.”
Who the favorite is or how close a deal is to completion is unknown, but Jorge Mas sat just behind Loria in the owner’s section behind home plate during the All-Star Game. Mas, the South Florida billionaire who agreed to buy the team for $1.17 billion according to a Forbes reportMonday that theMarlins denied, has two advantageswhenitcomesto trying to obtain the team. One is that he is local. “Obviously one of the things we always like to see in an ownership group is deep roots in the community, and they [theMas group] certainly satisfy that,” Manfred said. “I think the Mas family has been a prominent — maybe [that’s] not a strong enough word — preeminent family intheMiamicommunity for a very long time.”
Manfred also said, when asked about the reputation of Mas’ father as a staunch anti-Castro activist, that he is “not concerned about anybody’s particular political [views].” Jorge Mas Canosa, whodied in1997, was born in Cuba in 1939 and spent his life after coming to the United States (for good in the mid-1960s) working against Fidel Castro’s dictatorship.
Mas’ other advantage is he is wealthy enough to pay for most if not all of the asking price.
That’s a far different strategy than the ever-shifting factions of investors trying to chalk up the $1 billionplus to get a deal done. One of those groups, ledbyDerek Jeter, is reported to include NBA legend and Charlotte HornetsownerMichaelJordan. That group, according to a New York Post report, closed in on a deal to buy the Marlins for $1.2 billion.
The other, backed financially largely by Quogue Capital founder Wayne Rothbaum, has been quieter in recentweeks but includes many famous names: Tagg Romney, son of former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney; Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida; former major league pitchers Tom Glavine and Dave Stewart; and Miami-based rapper Pitbull.