BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : Expos’ Joy Is Replaced by Anger

They have the best record in baseball but no place to show it off.

The satisfaction and fulfillment the Montreal Expos were experiencing before the players walked out on Aug. 12 has been replaced, General Manager Kevin Malone said, by frustration, disappointment and anger.

“I’ve declared the Expos to be the champions of baseball based on our record, but I would say the future of the team is in jeopardy, and maybe the franchise as well,” Malone said.

The cancellation of the playoffs and World Series has left Malone facing the uncertainty of a hard winter, during which it will be difficult to keep his small-market team together, no matter what system is in place.

Larry Walker is eligible for free agency and seven of the best Expos are eligible for arbitration, among them Marquis Grissom, Moises Alou, Ken Hill and John Wetteland.

Committed to scouting and development, Malone--and predecessors Dan Duquette and Dave Dombrowski--assembled a team that was 74-40 with a six-game lead over the vaunted Atlanta Braves in the National League East when the season ended.

“What we accomplished was pretty remarkable,” Malone said. “We had proved we were better than the Braves. We had the best record in baseball and were the best team in baseball.”

Atlanta had a $40.5-million payroll. Montreal’s was $18.6 million. Only the San Diego Padre payroll was lower, $13.5 million.

The Expos, Malone said, have lost $10 million-$15 million as it is, and $20 million if they had reached the World Series. Even if Walker goes, he said, the payroll will increase by $7 million in the wake of losing $20 million “and we can’t afford to let that happen.” One or two other key players will have to be moved during what he foresees as “a very active winter, depending on the system and how many other clubs I can interest.”

“We had a team capable of winning a world championship, but we’re looking at another rebuilding year in 1995,” he said.

“I hope this doesn’t become another Pittsburgh, but all the signs are pointing in that direction.”

The players union likes to cite the Expos as an example of how a small-market team can survive in the current system, but management’s response is that if you have to break up the team right away, it’s not really a success story.

“Salaries are the only flexible area I see,” owner Claude Brochu said. “We aren’t going to take the losses. Our club isn’t highly leveraged, so we’ll be fine that way, but I have no intention of absorbing the debts. We’ll find a way of getting the losses off the books. That’s the way it is under the current system. We need a salary cap to compete on a yearly basis.”

Said Malone: “We hadn’t wavered from scouting and development and felt this was the year we’d reap the rewards. My greatest disappointment is for many of those on our staff who had made financial sacrifices and not taken raises so we could put that money into our major league budget. Now many of those same people have had to be laid off, and that’s a deep hurt.

“We also had begun to make a definite turnaround in our support here, cutting into the hockey crowd. Everything seemed ready to take off, including TV and broadcasting contracts and corporate sponsorships and season-ticket purchases.

“We were so close, but now there are questions about Montreal’s continuing existence as a franchise. That’s why I feel we paid the biggest price. We had the most to lose. We were something of the sacrificial lamb in all of this.”

CLEVELAND CRUSH

Next to Montreal, nowhere were the strike and ultimate cancellation more devastating than in Cleveland, where the Indians were 18,000 tickets away from 3 million. The new Jacobs Field symbolized the city’s renaissance, and the Indians were only one game behind the Chicago White Sox in the American League Central, with a chance for their first postseason appearance since 1954.

Catcher Sandy Alomar Jr. was so distraught by the lost opportunities that he broke down and cried during a TV interview Wednesday.

General Manager John Hart, who had creatively built the team and reshaped the payroll by trading high-salaried veterans and then buying the best of his talented young players out of arbitration with multiyear contracts, said with emotion:

“If there is one club that should never have been on strike, it’s this one. Why would our guys go on strike? Every one of them has been nurtured. We’ve given many of them long-term contracts at a point in their careers when many clubs would have wanted to see another year or two. I mean, the union has used us as an example of the way it should be done, and yet our guys are out.

“It’s just a . . . system, and the players have got to come to grips with the fact that it’s not working. There are a lot of people losing money. We’re headed for disaster if it continues.”

Although many teams face an uncertain winter, the Indians, at least, have many of their key players under contract for next year and beyond. The list includes Alomar, Dennis Martinez, Carlos Baerga, Albert Belle, Kenny Lofton, Paul Sorrento, Mark Clark and Jim Thome.

Eddie Murray signed a one-year, $3-million deal as a free agent last winter, with an option for ’95 at $3 million. The option became guaranteed if he started 145 games or made 550 plate appearances. The strike prevented that, but he had a contract provision pro-rating those numbers in the event of a strike, and on that basis Murray will be back.

As for Dave Winfield, whom the Indians acquired from the Minnesota Twins for potential postseason insurance after the strike started, Hart said, “Not knowing the system or the makeup of our club, it’s difficult to say. We’ll handle Dave the same way we handle a lot of our guys. We’ll evaluate our needs as we go through the winter and see where he fits in.”

Hart reflected on his belief that the competitive balance will deteriorate if the revenue disparity isn’t addressed and said, “The consequences of not getting a deal done is that, sure, we could go on kicking Minnesota’s butt and Milwaukee’s butt, and some of the other teams in trouble. We could kick their butts year after year. You can have teams put players in uniforms just to fill out a team, but what good is that? How is that good for the game?”

MVP OF . . .

Houston Astro first baseman Jeff Bagwell is certain to win the National League’s most-valuable-player award. He’ll be happy about it, he said. “But embarrassed too.

“It would be forever etched in stone that he was the guy who was the MVP of that strike year,” he said. “It’s embarrassing to me to be a part of a baseball season that won’t have a World Series for the first time in 90 years. We may have to give something back to get (the negotiations) done. It’s not getting done the way it is.”

If Bagwell is voted the MVP, he will receive his full $100,000 bonus, General Manager Bob Watson said.

“The word prorated came up in our discussions, but we won’t do that,” Watson said. “He did not prorate his season. He did his thing.”

Bagwell batted .368 with 39 homers and 116 runs batted in.

GRIEVING

How could the Texas Rangers fire Tom Grieve, the general manager of a first-place team? Well, the Rangers won the American League West title with a 52-62 record, worst of any first-place team in the history of any major American sports league.

It was the league’s fourth-worst record, the Rangers’ second losing record in the last three years and a continuation of 10 generally mediocre years under the deliberate Grieve.

In addition, the club’s top four minor league affiliates had losing records, the top two affiliates did not put a player on a postseason all-star team and the Rangers gave up their first-round picks in the last two amateur drafts as compensation for signing free-agents Will Clark and Tom Henke.

“At some point we have to say, ‘Let’s let somebody else take a look at it and see if they can put it together in a different way,’ ” club President Tom Schieffer said.

Assistant General Manager Sandy Johnson will get the first shot, but it’s an interim assignment.

Grieve handled it with class.

“We had every opportunity to succeed, and didn’t,” he said. “I regret that. I’m very disappointed in that. I’m disappointed in my own performance.

“If I was Whitey Herzog, who was fired (as manager) in 1973 after being told he would have a chance to build a team, I’d be bitter. If I was some other people who have been fired under unfortunate circumstances, I’d be bitter. But I don’t have an ounce of bitterness. All you ask for in this job is to be able to sink or swim based on your own ability. I believe I was given that opportunity.”

NEW YORK NOTEBOOK

--Third baseman Steve Buechele of the Chicago Cubs, on the owners’ demand for a system of cost certainty: “They want to know what it’ll cost to play baseball. What does that mean? The only thing I think it means is that they don’t know how to run their business. It’s called a budget, gentlemen. Find one and use it.

“Montreal and Cleveland and Houston have done it. Teams like Cleveland and Houston have locked up their core of young players in multiyear contracts.

“No one forced them to do that and no one forced those terrific young players to sign the contracts. But it gave the players security and that’s why they took it. It will cost those players money in the long run and the team will save money while knowing what their cost will be. That’s how those teams did their own salary cap and secured their cost of doing business.

“The other teams who don’t do that don’t know how to run a business. They want the players to do it. What we’re talking about here is mismanagement, and that’s the whole problem.”

--Florida Marlin Manager Rene Lachemann, on the duration of the strike: “When the strike started, I told a lot of you I was treating it like a rain-out. Well, this rain’s lasted about 40 days. It’s about time we built the ark.”

--Minnesota owner Carl Pohlad, on the solidarity of the owners: “In the last four or five labor negotiations, the owners have always folded. But there’s nothing to fold with today, because there’s no more water in the well. The players badly miscalculated.”

--Cleveland General Manager John Hart, on the uncertainty of the winter: “This is not a good year to be a free agent. So you file for free agency, so what? There’s no deal, so nobody calls you. You’re sitting at home and the clock is ticking. And what about a guy who’s 40 years old, and next year is his last big shot to make the big money? Is he going to stay out come next spring?”

--Boston Red Sox outfielder Andre Dawson on the likelihood he will play another year after planning to retire before the strike: “There’s something inside me that says I should go out in better circumstances. I’ll probably give it one more shot. That way, I think I may be comfortable with the fact that my career pretty much ended with me retiring like I want to.”

--Chicago White Sox General Manager Ron Schueler, on the possibility of losing free agents Jack McDowell, Darrin Jackson and Julio Franco without getting the World Series shot that the White Sox almost got last year: “This was the year we could have done something special, and that’s what is so frustrating. I thought we really grew as a team last year and this would be our year.

“Now we don’t have that chance to find out how good we are. I mean, we’ve lost a lot of money and the budget will be affected. Five or six players may not be back.”

--San Francisco General Manager Bob Quinn, on cutting $5 million or more from a $40-million payroll, meaning free-agent eligibles Bill Swift and Mike Jackson might be allowed to leave, John Burkett (6-8 after his 22 victories of 1993) might not be offered a contract and veterans Dave Martinez and Todd Benzinger might not be re-signed: “You’ve heard of the Exterminator? You’re looking at someone who will have to be very creative. We face as tough a task as any team in baseball going into 1995. It’s Herculean in nature.”