Los Angeles Times: Bill Plaschke (barf) talks to the key figures in the new Los Angeles Dodgers ownership.

For now, as the initial celebration fades and the close examination begins, Dodger fans need to see proof that this dream team won’t just turn into another nightmare.

“You know I’m going to do this right,” promised Johnson. “I would not be putting millions of my dollars into this if we weren’t going to do it right.”

The questioning started here with Johnson. Will he be more than just a new Dodger face and voice? Will he have the freedom to help run the Dodgers with his considerable business acumen and competitive spirit?

“You want to know Magic’s title? It’s owner,” Kasten said.

Johnson confirmed that he has already picked out a Dodger Stadium office and that, while he still has other business interests, this will be his main job and focus.

“I take, very seriously, the honor of being a minority owner in an organization where Jackie Robinson played,” Johnson said. “I’ll be there every day, fans will see me every day, I’ll be working hard to spread the word about how we’re going to make this a great franchise again.”

I think we’ve known all along that he was a figurehead, but he’s an awesome figurehead, so whatever.

Walter said he will remain in the background of the club’s daily operations, allowing Kasten to oversee baseball and business matters while Johnson is the caretaker of the image.

“I’m a baseball fan, but I’m not qualified to make baseball decisions, and I don’t want to pretend to be,” said Walter. “I’m here to support and help my people as much as I can. I’m here to cheer as loud as I can.”

But since he still controls the purse strings, the bucks still stop with him, no? Will he give Kasten the freedom to spend them? How does he view the idea of paying the sort of big money for the sort of big free agents that the Dodgers have avoided signing during most of their 14-year championship drought?

“Stan has a very proven formula for building a team that doesn’t win one year, but wins 12 years in a row [Atlanta Braves], so for me to tell him how you build that is completely inappropriate,” said Walter. “But having said that, we really want to win, and it’s OK if, while we’re producing the best players in the world, we also have the best players in the world on our field.”

In other words, said Johnson, “We are going to have all the resources available to us to put a championship team on the field.”

Oh dear, I think I’m in love.

“We understand what we just bought, we understand what it needs to be,” said Kasten. “We make more money when we win. We are real cognizant of that. While we want to build a long-term plan, we want to have a winner now.”

To understand Kasten’s baseball philosophy, check out his Atlanta Braves team that won the 1995 World Series. His front office was led by powerful General Manager John Schuerholz. His starting rotation was led by a high-priced free agent, Greg Maddux. His everyday lineup was filled with homegrown stars like Chipper Jones, Ryan Klesko and David Justice.

“I believe in scouting and player development, and a starting rotation,” Kasten said. “With both, anything is possible. Without both, nothing is possible.”

It’s just words, and I prefer actions, but they are saying literally everything right so far.

Haven’t been this excited about the team since they swept the Chicago Cubs in the 2008 NLDS.

Los Angeles Times: Walter Hamilton takes a look at the Guggenheim Partners.

Guggenheim Partners is connected to the family of Meyer Guggenheim, who came to the U.S. in the 1840s and made a fortune in mining. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is named after the family.

Peter Lawson Johnston II, a great-grandson of the Guggenheim’s patriarch, launched the financial services company in 2000. The company is run day to day by chief executive Mark Walter and executive chairman Alan Schwartz, the former CEO of Bear Stearns & Co.

The firm is a full-fledged investment bank in the mold of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Guggenheim has become a big player in commercial real estate debt, managing the type of investments that tripped up so many big Wall Street firms during the global financial crisis.

Guggenheim has varied holdings, including being a co-owner of the company that operates the Hollywood Reporter.

It has a large investment operation in Santa Monica, with more than 200 of its 1,700 employees based there. The firm manages about $125 billion in assets.

Mining, huh? It’s like they’re trolling Josh Macciello.

MLB.com: Richard Justice with a nice profile on Kasten.

He has some unshakeable core beliefs about running a baseball team. He believes the fan experience should be pleasant, that teams must be accountable to their customers. And he believes teams should be built from the inside through scouting and player development.

If he’s approved, he’ll surely use the work done by Cox and Schuerholz with the Braves as a blueprint for how to run the Dodgers.

He’s also a student of the game’s history and will almost certainly both understand and tap into the things that have made the Dodgers special, from the former players who created the team’s aura to the ballpark that is one of the signature destinations in Major League Baseball.

In both Atlanta and Washington, he told his employees that there really was no magic formula to succeeding. It was a matter of doing things right and getting better every single day.

Awesome.

Fox Sports: Ken Rosenthal believes Kasten will be the difference maker for the product on the field as well.

Wall Street Journal: Scott Austin has short blurbs on all those involved in the new ownership of the Dodgers.

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ESPN Los Angeles: Jon Weisman has a to-do list for the new owners.

The bottom line is, you can’t expect perfection, but you can demand excellence. Every effort must be made at making the best possible decision a thousand times over.

The new owners might fail. But, finally, Dodgers fans can at least say there’s hope.

Word.

Mike Scioscia’s Tragic Illness: Mike Petriello gives 19 random thoughts on the new ownership of the team.

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Dodgers Now: Dodgers players give their thoughts on the new owners, including Juan Rivera and Juan Uribe, who hadn’t heard of the deal until Dylan Hernandez told them.

Dodgers Now: What do Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol think about Magic Johnson‘s involvement with the Dodgers?

The question reminded me of this:

LA Weekly: I called Josh Macciello out a while ago, but this article was a thorough takedown. It’s long, but well worth a read.

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Baseball Prospectus: The rotation for the Los Angeles Dodgers might not be as good as we think in 2012.

That’s ninth in the National League, and I think it’s clear as to where the value starts tailing off.

If the rotation is going to be good this year, contributions from Nate Eovaldi and others will probably be a part of it.

Baseball Prospectus: Kevin Goldstein ranks the Dodgers farm system 19th in the MLB.

19. Los Angeles Dodgers
Top 11 Prospects List
System At a Glance: There’s certainly pitching here, but it’s more quantity than quality, and the organization is wafer-thin when it comes to positional prospects at the upper level.

Sounds about right to me.

Given that I just wrote about him gaining momentum among Los Angeles Dodgers fans, Josh Macciello gave a rather hilariously timed interview on Mason & Ireland today, admitting that he was not approved for the second round of ownership bidding, after which he then proceeded to go off on all types of tangents about why he’s getting screwed.

Obviously he’s not happy about being out, and despite his claims about being nothing but honest, if nothing else he has been disingenuous to fans about the nature of his involvement.

When the bidding first moved on to the second round, he insisted to everybody that he was part of the approved groups who were moving forward, which was the primary reason some ended up taking him seriously.

In retrospect, however, when I look back through his Twitter feed, it should have been a gigantic red flag to everybody when he accused Bill Shaikin (of all people) of journalism bias against him.

Gee, who are us Dodgers fans to believe?

Bill Shaikin or Josh Macciello?

The Mason & Ireland interview can be listened to here, and you can see that the entire interview basically consists of him accusing various people of a conspiracy against him. Macciello apparently decided that the best way to win over more fans was to go on rambling tangent after rambling tangent about why he’s still a serious player and about how he’s utterly confused as to why he’s not being taken seriously.

Additionally, he says he’s angry about how the whole affair has shaken out, so he’s going to reveal all his paperwork. Now while that’s great stuff for bloggers like me because it just adds entertainment value, why would he think insulting the people that are in control of the ownership bidding process is a good idea? Plus, I doubt coming off mad and emotional is probably the best course of action to get them to reconsider.

Either way, I think anybody rational who listened to the interview today came away with the sense that there’s probably a good reason his bid was not accepted, if he even made as big a bid as he says he did. Put it this way, at one point he seriously suggests that he’ll pay the winner of the auction $3 billion to give him the team, which just shows that he has either lost his mind or has no idea how MLB ownership works at all. Then, as if he needed to top that insanity, he guaranteed to everybody that because he’s now all hot and bothered, he will win the Dodgers at all costs.

Alrighty then.

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As I just wrote a few hours ago, he at least makes this ownership bidding process more entertaining for everybody involved, but as the amount of believers in him continues to grow, I can’t help but think they’re just going to be sorely disappointed in the end.

It would be a gigantic twist if he could prove all the doubters wrong, but after today, he’s ironically proven himself more of a joke than anything to be taken seriously.

In addition to agreeing with me on the level of want on Jared Kushner as owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Mike Petriello‘s article included an interesting link regarding Josh Macciello‘s ownership bid.

Sources close to the deal confirm that the bid he laid out recently is about $2.2 billion for the Dodgers and the stadium. Macciello would only confirm that, “with the money I’m bidding, I could buy three sport teams.”

That’s a ton of money, and if you’ve listened to what Macciello has had to say about the team and what his plans have been for the Dodgers, it’s hard not to like the guy in theory.

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From the start, I figured he would always have a type of underground support as an underdog type of owner, but that fans probably wouldn’t take him seriously. However, he went on this media blitz in January where he was basically saying all the right things, and I think the momentum has begun to swing in his direction.

I’m a skeptic, so I’m not willing to buy into everything at face value, but I realized his growing popularity when the reaction to him on Twitter went from making fun of how he looked to people urging me to listen to the interview posted above.

Well I ended up doing so and I’m still not convinced of anything, but that’s not the point. The point is that the fan support and trust for Macciello seems to be growing by the day.

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Recently on Twitter, he responded to a fan’s concern about the Bryan Stow tragedy and fan violence in Dodger Stadium, “Dude no one will get beat down when i own the team. Thats not the atmosphere i want at Dodger Stadium.” Why wouldn’t it happen? Because he’s going “To put extra millions into building a police station that can handle 50k plus so nobody would think of doing anything bad.”

It all seems so simple when you ask him, and I get the feeling that Dodgers fans are eating it up*, but I can’t help but be skeptical until somebody but him confirms that he’s a serious player in the process or that he gets associated with…uh…anybody else.

For now though, he’s certainly made the ownership bidding process a bit more interesting.

*I sincerely hope he’s pandering to the fans when he says the Dodgers will win the 2012 World Series and that Ned Colletti is doing a great job.

According to the Los Angeles Times, at least eight bidders were selected to move on to the second round of the Los Angeles Dodgers ownership sweepstakes.

Two groups who will not be included in that round are Mark Cuban and Dennis Gilbert.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and local baseball executive Dennis Gilbert did not advance to the second round of the Dodgers’ ownership bidding, according to two people familiar with the process but not authorized to discuss it publicly.

So who is confirmed to have made it?

Bill Shaikin reports that groups led by Magic Johnson, Joe Torre, and Steven Cohen were in.

#Dodgers ownership finalists include Magic’s group, Caruso/Torre, Steven Cohen. Not sure who else.

Later he updated to include groups led by Stanley Gold, Peter O’Malley, and Stan Kroenke.

Gold/Disney, O’Malley, Kroenke also into second round. Gold and O’Malley have NOT merged. #dodgers

So that’s six out of eight, but who’s left?

According to the Wall Street Journal, Leo Hindrey and Marc Utay are through as well.

So that leaves one candidate left, and underdog bidder Josh Macciello left this not so cryptic message on his Twitter earlier.

love That Pearl Jam song “I’m still alive”

That makes eight interesting candidates with Magic Johnson and Steven Cohen probably at the head of the pack.

I wrote up all the mentioned names here, so go check it out if you like.

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Correction: There are not only eight bidders who passed, there are at least eight bidders who passed. Story amended.

With the Los Angeles Dodgers in the news for the impending bidding war over the ownership of the team, I thought this would be as appropriate a time as ever to run through the publicly declared bidders, as the deadline for submission has come and gone.

Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times breaks down the specifics of the bidding process in nice and tidy parts.

If McCourt has the final say on the new owner, what role does Major League Baseball play in the process?

MLB has agreed to approve up to 10 bidders. Yet Blackstone is unlikely to clear even that many bidders for MLB consideration, given the time needed for the league to investigate the structure and financing of each potential ownership group. To cover the costs of the investigation, MLB will charge $25,000 to each bidder cleared by Blackstone.

If MLB rejects a prospective bidder cleared by Blackstone, does McCourt have any recourse?

Yes. He can appeal to the mediator who brokered his settlement with MLB.

Do the other MLB owners have a say?

Yes. They can approve or reject any bidder that passes the MLB investigation. However, once the league informs Blackstone of which prospective buyers have been approved by MLB owners, McCourt conducts the final round of bidding and determines the winner. If the winning bidder’s final offer is dramatically higher than the initial offer, MLB reserves the right to review the financing.

When will this happen?

There is no set date, but the calendar suggests the end of March. McCourt has agreed to select the winning bidder by April 1 and disclose the winner to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court by April 6.

Outstanding stuff, as always.

Regarding the bidders themselves though, who are the groups and what good or bad traits do they bring to the table?

Let’s find out.

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Mark Cuban

The Good: A charismatic fan favorite of an owner, basically the exact opposite of Frank McCourt. His tenure as the Dallas Mavericks owner has obviously been a successful one, as he turned a joke of a franchise into a perennial contender. While his money has often been cited as the reason for the change, he has proven that he will explore any avenue that could potentially give his franchise an advantage. As such, he is unlikely to be as sabermetrics averse as the current Dodgers front office, as evidenced by his implementation of analytics in basketball to score his first NBA Championship.

The Bad: I’m not convinced he’s that legit of a threat to win. He’s not an idiot and he’s unlikely to go over whatever he has the Dodgers valued at, as he showed in the bidding for the Texas Rangers. While I’m confident he would find quality baseball men to run the franchise, he’s not going into the process with anybody in place.

My Take: I would love for him to be owner, as his history suggests he would make winning a priority and would explore the most efficient ways to do so. Unfortunately, I think it’s a long shot.

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Magic Johnson/Stan Kasten/Mark Walters

The Good: Magic Johnson instantly becomes the face of the ownership and it should go over extremely well with fans. Stan Kasten employs his experience with the Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals to run the baseball operations. Mark Walters could use his eleventy trillion dollars to supplement the payroll and buy elite players. Seriously, Guggenheim Partners has over $100 billion in assets and he’s the CEO.

The Bad: Uh…none?

My Take: My current preference to win the bidding. I can’t see a better combination.

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Steven Cohen/Steve Greenberg/Arn Tellem

The Good: Founder of SAC Capital Advisors and a hedge fund manager, Steven Cohen is worth over $8 billion. The group’s baseball experience will come from Steve Greenberg, who served as a deputy commissioner of baseball, and Arn Tellem, who is a player agent for the Wasserman Media Group. Get to use puns on Arn Tellem’s name.

The Bad: In today’s political environment, it’s not exactly ideal in the public relations department to have a hedge fund manager as an owner, and especially not one whose company is under investigation by the SEC. Went through an ugly divorce that led to lawsuits. Sound familiar?

My Take: Do. Not. Want. I don’t want to deal with yet another owner with baggage. Haven’t Bud Selig and the other owners learned their lesson yet? Yes, other ownership groups could have drama, but this one has already been confirmed to have been involved in messes before, so why bother? My fear is that the Blackstone Group, which is in control of the sale, is a significant investor in SAC Capital Advisors, and that could give the latter a gigantic advantage.

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Rick Caruso/Joe Torre/Byron Trott

The Good: Joe Torre becomes the face of the franchise and has a ton of baseball experience. Despite his tenure with the Dodgers, I get the feeling that fans love him, and given that he just left a position with the MLB, he and Bud Selig should have a solid working relationship. Byron Trott, named by Warren Buffett as the only banker he trusts, heads BDT Capital Partners and was previously the vice chairman for Goldman Sachs. I would have the same concerns with him as I do with Steven Cohen, but he has no legal issues with his comapny and Buffett’s word carries weight. Rick Caruso is a local developer who is worth around $1.7 billion and has tons of local popularity.

The Bad: Honestly? Torre as the baseball man frightens me. A lot. He’s not progressive with his thinking at all and he never seemed to have a problem with Ned Colletti, leading me to believe he just might keep him around. Disastrous.

My Take: I don’t necessarily have a problem with the group, but the risk that Torre could regress the Dodgers to decades old thinking and retain Colletti is too much for me to bear. Out.

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Dennis Gilbert/Larry King/Jason Reese/Randy Wooster

The Good: Both Larry King and Dennis Gilbert are Dodgers fans, which is always a plus. King’s name carries weight, though I’m not sure he has any name value as a sports personality. Gilbert has extensive baseball experience as a former player agent, former player, and current special assistant to Jerry Reinsdorf, who owns the Chicago White Sox. Jason Reese and Randy Wooster are Chairman/CEO and President of Imperial Capital, a Los Angeles area investment bank, and the two will be providing the financial thump in the group.

The Bad: Not much public motivation, honestly. No idea if they actually have the money to compete.

My Take: If they have the money to spend competitively, then I have no issue with the group, but as of now, that’s a big unknown. There are rumors that they might have to hook up with Fox or Time Warner to get the finances to work. Ugh.

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Leo Hindery/Marc Utay

The Good: Leo Hindery is a Managing Partner at private equity fund InterMedia Partners, and he founded the YES Network for the New York Yankees and served as Chairman & CEO until 2004. Marc Utay is a Managing Partner at private equity firm Clarion Capital Partners. The pair of them tried to buy the Chicago Cubs back in 2009, so there’s a history there.

The Bad: They’ve been under the radar, and as a result not much has been revealed as to their finances or plans, so the biggest downside right now is the uncertainty.

My Take: Hard to judge what you know little about, so I can’t provide much positive or negative feedback until more is revealed.

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Steve Garvey/Orel Hershiser

The Good: Their resume in baseball speaks for itself, though little is known about their actual qualifications as executives. They certainly figure to have local support and can become the faces of the franchise.

The Bad: They don’t seem to have funding. Last time they spoke on the Dodgers, they were still looking for investors and it’s unknown who they found.

My Take: Not enough information to endorse two former players with unknown finances and unknown executive experience.

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Josh Macciello

The Good: He’s not a hedge fund manager or a banker or an executive, he’s a regular guy like you or me. He’s the CEO of ArmItal Sports and plans to use the gold mines he owns, which are valued in the tens of billions, as collateral for the purchase, so he says he has the financial backing.

The Bad: He’s a regular guy like you or me. The lack of baseball connections, the lack of executive experience, the lack of community support, and the legitimate questions about whether he would even be taken seriously by the commissioner and fellow owners. All of those are negatives.

My Take: I understand why fans might want to side with him, but I just can’t. It has little to do with his looks or his spelling or whatever else. It has more to do with the lack of experience in everything that I think an owner should be about.

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Stan Kroenke

The Good: Stan Kroenke is the largest shareholder in Arsenal F.C., owns the St. Louis Rams, Colorado Mammoth, and Colorado Rapids, and he formerly owned the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, and Colorado Crush, all of which he transferred to his son to comply with NFL ownership rules. Needless to say, he has experience with this sort of thing and his teams have generally performed well under his tenure in charge.

The Bad: Perhaps his money will be spread a bit thin and I’m wondering if this has more to do with trying to move the Rams to Los Angeles than actually caring about the Dodgers. No idea about the baseball side of things.

My Take: I’m okay with this in theory, but I’m going to hold off on endorsing the move until more is revealed. We know a lot about him as an owner, but not a lot about his interest in the Dodgers.

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Potential Mergers And/Or Group Joiners

Peter O’Malley: Submitted an ownership bid himself, but has been rumored to be in discussions to link up with the bid of Stanley Gold & Roy Disney’s Family and/or Tony Ressler. A throwback to the good old days of Dodgers family ownership, but it’s probably not gonna help that he was talking about how terrible McCourt was as an owner considering McCourt will hold the ultimate decision.

Stanley Gold/Roy Disney’s Family: Submitted an ownership bid as their own group, but have been rumored to be linking up with Peter O’Malley and/or Tony Ressler. Gold is the President & CEO of Shamrock Holdings and has local popularity, but his financial clout is not known. Not much is known about what Roy Disney’s Family brings to the table either, I assume it’s money but nobody knows. Group is short on baseball experience.

Tony Ressler: Rumored to be linking up with either Stanley Gold & Roy Disney’s Family or Peter O’Malley or either or both. Co-founder of local investment firm Ares Capital, which has in excess of $40 billion in assets.

Tom Barrack: Chairman & CEO of investment firm Colony Capital has a net worth over $1 billion. Has been rumored to join several groups, but no specifics have popped up yet.

Fox: Seriously? No. Please no.

Time Warner Cable: They haven’t actually done anything wrong, but why get involved in this type of ownership situation again? Fool me once…

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Rumored Bidders

Alan Casden: A real estate developer worth over $1 billion, he might have more interest in the property the Dodgers own more than the team itself, which is disconcerting. Remember, this is the guy who tried to buy the team last time around and had plans to move Dodger Stadium to a different location. MLB didn’t want him last time because of an investigation into illegal campaign contributions to local politicians. Why deal with the headache?

Ron Burkle: Worth over $3 billion dollars, he is the current co-owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins. While no baseball people are rumored to be on board yet, he seems to carry a lot of weight locally. Divorce was…uh…messy.

Fred Claire/Andy Dolich/Ben Hwang: Fred Claire has experience as an executive with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Andy Dolich has experience as an executive with the Oakland Athletics. Ben Hwang, former executive at Life Technologies, will provide the finances for the group. The question mark revolves around money and whether they have enough of it.

Tom Golisano: Founder of Paychex is worth $1.4 billion and is the former owner of the Buffalo Sabres. Was preparing a bid, but it’s unknown whether he followed through or not. Worth noting is that Sabres fans criticized his lack of spending, and he’s on record as saying that the biggest payroll doesn’t lead to championships, which is correct in theory, but seems like code for not wanting to spend much.