Under The Knife 7/3/24
No Leaf Clover
The Boston Celtics are for sale and this is going to affect baseball. Sure, sales happen all the time and even ones that are record setters (Clippers) or head-scratchers (Suns) happen enough to barely get noticed. When the Orioles were sold just before Opening Day, people outside Baltimore barely noticed and with nothing changing (and a lot of wins), why would you bother?
But the Celtics are going to be different. First, they’re iconic. Second, they just won a championship, are in position to win more, and might be the most expensive NBA payroll by 2026. But it’s who is lining up to buy them, for all that and more, that will change things.
Wyc Grousbeck’s group is going to make a nice 12 percent annual return off the team, which is higher than the S&P. It’s hard to knock their stewardship, so I don’t mind them making their money at all. But we’re going to see two kinds of groups - sovereign wealth and private equity - be the key bidders here, absent Jensen Huang deciding he needs a sports team. Redbird Capital is already involved with the Red Sox through Fenway Sports and we’ll see Arctos consider whether it’s small investments in many teams is as powerful as one big one in an icon.
An interesting clip from David Rubenstein, who just bought the Orioles.
On the other side, we’ll see at least three countries use their sovereign wealth to enter the market. The NBA has been more willing to take on both private equity and foreign ownership; now they might get both. It won’t be the Saudi PIF or Qatar’s fund out front, but don’t be surprised to see someone like Jared Kushner (who made abortive bids for the Nationals and Marlins) or one of a kazillion Harvard or MIT educated hedge fund managers in front for both the Gulf and local ties. Rumors are already out that Steve Pagliuca, a current minority owner and former Bain exec, is trying to put together a group that starts with Pats owner Robert Kraft.
Once the Celtics are purchased, someone else in the NFL and MLB won’t be far down the shopping list. It might even be the Red Sox, with John Henry’s group in much the same situation as the Celtics selling group - they’re older and offended by the idea of estate taxes. That matches with a lot of groups and probably won’t change because, well, capitalism. Some of this is going to come down to timing, but baseball has shown that when a jewel asset like the Dodgers come up for sale, they go at premium prices. We’re back at that once in a generation moment for several teams and with the Celtics leading the way, we may see an entirely new class of ownership inaugurated.
For now, let’s look at the injuries:
KODAI SENGA, SP NYM (strained shoulder)
Kodai Senga will start his rehab assignment on Friday and if you don’t think the Mets have done an amazing job on this, look down to where JP France is. I’m not knocking the Astros here; France’s situation is different, but the odds are that more pitchers with shoulder capsule strains will end up on France’s path than Senga’s. It hasn’t been fast, but I’m not sure it could be. Getting half a season from Senga isn’t ideal, but it might be a win for the surging Mets.
There’s a lot of things I look at when I’m evaluating pitchers in a rehab assignment. A lot of it is simple - pitch count, velocity, making hitters miss appropriate to level. There’s more with this one and I am a bit worried it’s going to get a bit confusing. Senga’s going to be looked at one way by the media and public and a far different way internally. It’s the latter that counts and will be far more objective.
Speaking with sources and people around the game, the one thing they’re worried about is whether Senga and his teammates understand this. The expectation is that Senga has bought in, going through his slow, unusual, but successful rehab. However, his teammates are now on a heater and thinking about getting back an ace-level starter to fuel their fire. That already gets a bit fuzzy. I’ll have more on this once we see this first start and how he comes out of it.