Teams with no owners/Inactive owners

Something should be setup to help these teams. Inactive owners is a seperate deal that depends on if their inactive or just semi-active, but for teams with no owners somebody should at least be managing their finances and roster moves. Otherwise they're going to lose any potential free agents with nothing in return, develop prospects poorly, etc. This will help make their teams more attractive to new owners.

Another thing I'm seeing is teams with ticket prices that are killing their teams. I'm assuming these owners are inactive or don't have an owner, but maybe not... anyway Texas, Chicago WS, Oakland, Texas, LA Dodgers, and to a lesser degree some of the other teams.

I tried to do something like this last year, but it got voted down.

Well what we tried to setup last year was other owners having full control of teams. I don't think this passed because we didn't want the owners to have the ability to trade. I think making decisions such as moving players up and down the farm system and re-signing free agents is perfectly acceptable. I would volunteer to go through and submit a depth chart and re-sign players I think would be wise for ALL uncontrolled teams if that would help save time.

Obviously the main goal is to get an active owner for each team. Right now there are 4 teams needing an owner - Houston, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, & Oakland. There are a few others that seem spotty at best, but I'll leave those out of this.

Just as a side note does this sound about right...around 15 very/super active owners and 10 semi active owners (give or take a few on each of those), and then 4 open teams?

Back to the open teams. I'd say pick 2-3 willing owners (USC has volunteered, I'd volunteer also) to run teams without an owner. They can each run a team or two's daily moves (finances, minor league management, lineups, etc.), then any big moves could be decided between the 2-3 in this group or maybe with some of admin also. This would include trades, extensions, free agents, etc. This needs to be done to make the team as attractive as possible to a new owner. I'm not saying these teams should be making a large number of moves, but trading away superstars they can't afford or don't need because they are rebuiling/trying to get out of debt only makes sense. If not these teams will only continue to decline.

I don't think we should have owner's running separate teams, but we should definently assign very active owners to manage lineups and submit depth charts....

that's what I'm thinking, then maybe something like they can go to the dead team managing pool of owners or admin if they think somebody should be traded. Maybe this could be limited to players that team is potentially going to lose to free agency in that year? Not sure if you should do this for contract extensions or resigning players also for that team?

It looks to me like admin or somebody has been doing a good job of keeping prospects at the right level. However what I was suggesting was that someone do more for things like prices, budget, free agents to be, lineups etc. For instance Houston:

Looking at their ticket prices they had 8000 and 4000 fans at their last two games, Lowering the ticket prices to around 17 would make them an extra 400k in ticket sales each home game, plus whatever concessions increase comes with that. Attendance would be up around 38K at that price. If you look at their roster they have the following arb eligible or free agents to be:
Adam Everett SS 82/82 3750000
Luke Scott LF 83/83 327000
Willy Taveras CF 83/83 4000000
Jason Lane RF 79/79 6250000
Chris Burke CF 79/79 327000
Brandon Backe SP 79/79 5250000
Carlos Hernandez SP 81/81 5500000
Brad Lidge RP 86/86 4000000
Dave Borkowski RP 81/81 3000000
Chad Qualls RP 71/71 1900000

They probably would have been better off releasing or trading several of these at some point as their record is currently 50-94. They could have saved quite a bit of money.... maybe picked up some prospects or picks by trading some of these people. Their lineup could have used some help too as they have a leadoff hitter with a 240 oba, and a catcher that batted 180 for all of last year, and is currently at 150 for this year.

Similiar for Milwaukee:
Ronny Cedeno 2b 87/87 327000
Larry Bigbie LF 79/79 1900000
Angel Berroa SS 79/79 3500000
David Kelton LF 75/75 327000
Paul Maholm SP 93/97 327000
Enrique Gonzalez SP 87/87 327000
Adam Wainwright RP 93/93 327000
Chris Demaria RP 88/94 327000
Bob Howry RP 78/78 4000000

Kei Igawa SP 77/77 4000000 x 4yrs

these players are arb eligible or free agents to be...except for Igawa. Shouldn't we just release Igawa to save this team that's deep in debt several million a year? I know new owners have thsi option, but shouldn't we just do that for this team automatically? I probably would have done the same for Berroa and Bigby for that matter.

I know I've read that people are against owners having two teams, so I'm not suggesting that. Just somebody to help out and keep a closer eye on some of the budget/lineup type stuff. Then maybe a group to make larger decisions like cutting players or trading players they stand to lose to free agency.

To add to this, it would probably be smart of the Oakland A's to re-sign Chris Carpenter and Dave Bush to decent contracts. They can get both guys for about what they are currently making and if they wanted to trade either, could probably get more than what they'd get from the free agent compensation.