Facing Deficit, Angels Waver on Free Agents

The Angels face an estimated deficit of $3.25 million for 1991, Executive Vice President Jackie Autry said Monday, raising the prospect that the club will have to choose between signing prize free agent Bobby Bonilla or re-signing first baseman Wally Joyner instead of having both players in their lineup next season.

Autry said the projected 1991 deficit would be the second-largest in club history. The Angels do not routinely disclose bottom-line results for the team’s operation, so her disclosure of the size of the projected deficit was unusual.

In an interview Monday, Autry also voiced concern about the financial impact of substantial salary arbitration awards this winter. Because an arbitrator chooses between figures offered by the club and a player, there is no way to predict how big the awards will be. That makes budgeting salaries more difficult.

“Right now we’re trying to accomplish signing Mr. Joyner, and if we can’t, that leaves us some money to put in other directions,” she said. “We probably won’t be able to do both. But that depends on what Bonilla is looking for.”

The club won’t be able to sign both players if Bonilla’s salary request is $25 million to $30 million for five years, as has been rumored. Joyner, one of the club’s most popular players, is expected to command about $16 million for four years.

By contrast, the Angels’ entire payroll was about $32 million last season, when they finished last in the American League West.

Only in 1990, when all the major league clubs were required to pay a settlement to the players’ union as a result of an arbitrator’s ruling that owners had conspired to lower bids on free agent players, did the club absorb bigger losses, she said. Bonilla, 28, hit .302 for the Pirates last season with 18 home runs and 100 runs batted in. A versatile player who has played first base, third base, right field and left field, he has averaged 23 homers and 97 RBIs over the last five seasons and is considered the prime free agent in this winter’s market.

Jackie Autry, a former banker who oversees the Angels’ business operations, said she was favorably impressed by Bonilla last Friday, when she and her husband lunched with Bonilla and escorted him through Autry’s Western Heritage Museum. She said they didn’t discuss money. The Autrys did not attend meetings involving Bonilla, club President Richard Brown and Senior Vice Presidents Whitey Herzog and Dan O’Brien.

When asked if the Angels had made Bonilla an offer, his agent, Dennis Gilbert, said Monday: “I won’t comment on negotiations.” However, the cost is certain to be steep, as evidenced by Gilbert’s comment last Friday that Bonilla will consider his options carefully because “it’s pretty tough to wrap up a 25-to-30-million-dollar deal quickly.”

Asked if she considered a contract of that magnitude unreasonable, Autry said: “Thirty million, yes, because I don’t think the California Angels have the financial wherewithal to put together a $30-million package. I wish we had the financial wherewithal to do that. . . .

“More and more clubs are getting scared off (of pursuing free agents) and don’t have the financial wherewithal. If you continue to load debt onto debt it becomes impossible.”

Autry also disputed Forbes magazine’s estimate of her husband’s wealth. The magazine’s figure of $300 million is inaccurate, she said, and especially so in this economic downturn. The Autrys’ holdings include real estate and radio station KMPC, which have both felt the impact of a weak economy.

“Are we sitting on cash? No,” Autry said. She said the deficit “is why you see us offloading the type of contract that Dave Winfield, Bert Blyleven and Dave Parker had. But arbitration is a factor you can’t deal with. You save 10 to 12 million dollars on contracts and add 9 to 10 million in arbitration. I told Whitey that and he said, ‘I’d better go back to the drawing board.’ This is a business that has to be operated on a financially sound basis.”

Autry said she found Bonilla to be “an outstanding young man” who seemed open to moving West.

Bonilla, a native New Yorker, has received offers from the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies and will talk with the Chicago Cubs and White Sox.

“I don’t think money is quite as big a consideration as people think,” she said. “I think he’ll go where he and his family will be happiest. Once you get past the $4 million mark, what’s another $1 million when you have family considerations? He has a 3-year-old daughter and he has to think of preschool for her and what type of schools he wants her to attend. . . . He has a lot of ties to the East Coast, but he has ties to the West Coast too. Once he has met with all the clubs, I think it will be a matter of deciding which city he wants to reside in.”