Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Eureka! Deodorant!

I've found a solution to the stench of death that is Jason Giambi.

As blogged here yesterday (with a nod to Bloody Gamebreak for the link), Giambi's career is dying a slow death. Cashman and Torre broached the subject of demoting Giambi to the minor leagues to "get things straightened out" which is team-speak for "you suck shit and you're bringing us down!"

I have devised a solution -- a deodorant, if you will, for covering up the stench coming from Giambi's corner of the clubhouse.

Giambi is owed $80M for the next 3 full seasons. Boss Steinbrenner should call up his investment banker (I am actually on a first-name basis with him -- he was my professor this past semester) and work out a $30M loan in order to buy Giambi out of his contract. That $30M represents 37.5% of the Yankees' total obligation to Giambi which should pass muster with the union. It doesn't violate any of the collective bargaining provisions (I just read the CBA so I'll spare you the minutiae) so the only impediments to this plan are a) Boss agreeing to pay the buyout and b) Giambi agreeing to accept the buyout.

If Boss amortizes the $30M over 360 payment periods (monthly payments for 30 years, just like a mortgage) at 4.45%, he'll be giving Giambi a monthly check for $151,115.63. I think Giambi, who's stolen plenty of money from Boss already, should be quite pleased with sitting at his house doing nothing while collecting 100K every month. Getting this low-interest loan shouldn't be a problem since Boss has great credit and a very robust revenue profile to borrow against.
Boss can secure this loan with a fraction of his gate revenue or he can sell an interest in the team to another limited partner. Since his team is worth an approximate $830M (Forbes, 2004), it shouldn't be too hard to get an investment bank or insurance company to fork over $16.6M for a 2% limited interest. Hell, he'll need to sell more than that to future investors for his construction of a new Yankee Stadium in 2010.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

In order for Giambi to accept that buyout, we need to make him want out of New York. I am going to the game today and plan on throwing feces at him... bloody feces. Wish me luck.

MJ said...

I can probably squeeze out a few for you to bring to the game. Let me know if you need me to tap into my private reserve.

Mighty Mike said...

I kind of want Giambi to be shipped the minors so I can boo him right here in Columbus.

You know New Yorkers are getting soft. In the old days they wouldve buried him in Giants stadium. Now you need lawyers and accounts, for shame

MJ said...

I think if Giambi gets shipped to the minors (and I don't believe he will) it'll be to Tampa where team brass can keep a better eye on him.

Also, I'm not sure why the legion of Yankee-Haters out there would want to boo Giambi. If anything, they should cheer him for fouling up the Dynasty.

Mikey, you've got a point -- in the good old days, the boys from the neighborhood would've taken Giambi to a warehouse and tortured him like Joe Pesci tortured that guy in the movie "Casino." Now, NYC is so full of lawyers, accountants and bankers, there's no vigilante justice anymore. It's a pity too. I'd be happy to put up some cash for a contract killing in this case.

Gutsy Goldberg said...

I fail to check the blog for a couple of days, and we're already talking about burying baseball players and contract killings. More importantly, I really think Steinbrenner should read the financial advice that MJ gave. That's a solution for today's era. Unless of course, we are still in the Soprano era.