Chuck Greenberg keeps telling everyone who will listen that there’s nothing to worry about, the sale of the Rangers will close by April 1, and all will be happy and sunshine. Events on the ground, however, continue to make such a scenario less and less likely. Accordin
To review, under terms of the initial deal, the creditors were to get $230 million in cash. They want $300 million and have at least claimed that they’d throw the team into bankruptcy court in order to get it. Now, to be fair, the odds of actually collecting that amount in bankruptcy court are rather small, and that’s before you even figure in the legal fees and hassle. But that’s the posture anyway, and each time Greenberg has attempted to get the deal done, they’ve said no dice.
Last week’s back and forth had Greenberg upping the offer to $240 million or $275 million depending on who you believe (the $275 million figure was supposed to contain deferred money). $30-$60 million ain’t hay, so it’s not like you can expect the creditors to simply say “ah, screw it, let’s just round down” any more than you can expect Greenberg to simply say “ah screw it, I’ll just write you a check to get it done.”
This doesn’t mean Greenberg doesn’t end up with the Rangers at some point. It does, however, yet again, render the rosy “every little thing gonna be alright” jazz he’s been peddling since December increasingly silly. Deals of this size get derailed over far less than $60 million, and even if they end up going through, a difference in that amount can utterly destroy the timeline.
Upshot: there’s a very real possibility that the Rangers may spend another season, or at least a good chunk of it, in the same kind of financial limbo they were in last year. A year in which they had to beg MLB for loans.
