The Best Team Money Didn't Buy

By ROSS NEWHAN

May 13, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

“It was like trying to build a house without ever being permitted to put the roof on and finish the job.”

--Kevin Malone, former Montreal Expo general manager

Wearing a tool belt of hammer and nails, the Expos check into Dodger Stadium tonight with the lowest payroll in baseball and the best record.

Kevin Malone is now assistant general manager of the Baltimore Orioles, having left Montreal after the 1995 season, as Dan Duquette did before him, and Dave Dombrowski did before Duquette. They were all frustrated over the inability to retain key players, most developed by the Expos, because of financial limitations.

“The organization is loaded with quality people who are all on the same page but never able to reap the rewards because every year they’re forced to move one or two of the best players they had scouted and developed,” Malone said.

“In my case there was a combination of factors [for the decision to leave]. From a non-baseball standpoint, my family wasn’t happy in the French culture and the lack of concern there for the English language. I’m not saying it’s bad, but it wasn’t our choice of lifestyles. In addition, my son has asthma and the cold weather made it difficult for him six months of the year.

“From a baseball standpoint, it didn’t seem worth the time, effort and dedication if we weren’t going to be able to complete the job, if we weren’t going to be permitted to put the roof on. It was really frustrating.”

There is an all-star roster of players who have left Montreal via trade or free agency, all or in part because of financial concerns.

The list includes Andre Dawson, Tim Raines, Mark Langston, Tim Wallach, Delino DeShields, Otis Nixon, Dennis Martinez, Ken Hill, John Wetteland, Marquis Grissom and Larry Walker. Now a comparatively anonymous, modestly paid and overachieving group of Expos are trying to rebuild what the strike of 1994 and ensuing fire sale destroyed.

The Expos were 34 games over .500 and led the National League East by six games when the August strike shut down the season. Montreal officials claim they lost more than $15 million because of the stoppage.

Before the 1995 season, Walker was permitted to leave as a free agent, and Malone was forced to trade Hill, Wetteland and Grissom.

“If you understand how hard it is to develop a team capable of going 34 games over .500, especially with the limited resources of the Expos, then you can understand the frustration,” Malone said of the strike and the disassembling of the team.

“We were the best team in baseball and we have to be satisfied with that as our only reward. Dan Duquette [now general manager of the Boston Red Sox] had put together a quality product, building on what Dave Dombrowski [now president of the Florida Marlins] and his staff had started, and I had tweaked it some.

“We still had to play out the schedule, but you could feel how close we were to winning a championship. I mean, knowing the opportunity probably wouldn’t come that way again in Montreal made it so difficult, so hard to swallow.”

The Expos went from 74-40 in 1994 to 66-78 last year, from a percentage of .649 to .458, the ninth largest one-season decrease in major league history.

Forgotten amid that fall to fifth place in the NL East and statistics that put the Expos 11th in the league in batting, 10th in home runs and seventh in earned-run average, is the fact that Manager Felipe Alou had the decimated Expos in contention for a wild card until outfielder Moises Alou, his son, was lost because of injuries to both shoulders in mid-August.

Yet even the respected and talented manager, two weeks before his 1996 spring camp opened, was quoted by the Associated Press from the Dominican Republic as bemoaning baseball’s payroll disparities and saying, “I’m in for a long year. . . . I have to do with what I have.”

Alou maintains that some of his comments were misconstrued, but a fellow manager, Jim Leyland of the Pittsburgh Pirates, knows where Alou was coming from. Leyland has had to cope with similar roster and payroll cutbacks, his once championship team reduced to rubble.

Asked about Alou’s comments in the spring, Leyland said, “As a manager you’re in a pretty awkward position. People ask you all the time, ‘How’s your team going to do?’ And you’re supposed to answer honestly, but you can’t. You have to lie and tell them you’re going to be competitive, though sometimes you know you’re not going to be.

“I always say we’re a young team, rebuilding. Hell, I don’t know what we are. I’m not that smart. I don’t know anybody who is.”

What are the $15.4-million Expos, 26-12 and almost unbeatable (16-4) at home?

What about a team that leads the league in all key offensive categories and is fourth in pitching?

Said Malone: “I’m not surprised how well they’ve played. They have two youngsters out of the system [second baseman Mike Lansing and shortstop Mark Grudzielanek] who have continued to develop, and two people we acquired in trades last year [left fielder Henry Rodriguez from the Dodgers and first baseman David Segui from the New York Mets] who are showing what they can do given the chance to play full time. They also have the best manager in baseball developing young players. It’s a real good fit.”

A bountiful farm system has consistently enabled the Expos to replace their losses, but it would have been difficult to predict that Grudzielanek--the bane of headline writers since replacing Wil Cordero this year--and Lansing would be batting .360 and .318 respectively, consistent table setters for Rodriguez, Moises Alou, Segui and third baseman Shane Andrews and a tandem-type leadoff team reminiscent of a time when the Expos had Grissom, Raines, Nixon and DeShields in the same lineup.

It would have been difficult to predict as well that Rodriguez would be batting .349 with 15 homers and 46 runs batted in or that Segui would be hitting .344 with five home runs and 21 runs batted in or that F.P. Santangelo would have emerged from seven years in the minors to hit .313 as a replacement for outfielder Rondell White, expected to sit out five more weeks because of bruised kidney and spleen.

“The Dodgers opened the door for me,” Rodriguez said of the trade that sent Joey Eischen and Roberto Kelly to Los Angeles.

His story has been chronicled. Rodriguez arrived in May with an injured leg that was soon discovered to be broken. The injury virtually wiped out 1995, but sent Rodriguez to the weight and workout room with a new discipline. He is stronger and more confident, and fans at Olympic Stadium now litter the field with Oh! Henry candy bars in response to Rodriguez homers.

Another former Dodger, Pedro Martinez, has also found Montreal to be sweet indeed. At 24, acquired for DeShields, he is the 4-1 ace of a rotation that has lost the flamboyant Carlos Perez for the season because of a rotator tear.

Tavo Alvarez has come out of the system to ease that loss, and the Expos have two more acclaimed prospects pitching at triple-A: Jose Paniagua and Ugueth Urbina.

New General Manager Jim Beattie traded Cordero to Boston to make room for Grudzielanek and acquire a fifth starter in Rheal Cormier, and sent third baseman Sean Berry to Houston to make room for Andrews and acquire reliever Dave Veres, bolstering a bullpen masterfully handled by Alou.

Finances played a modest role in the Cordero and Berry moves, but Jeff Fassero, who makes $2.8 million and has long been rumored to be the next big-money Expo to be traded, is currently off the block because of his and the team’s success.

“As long as we keep winning I don’t think they’ll trade me,” said Fassero, 3-3 with a 3.00 ERA as the No. 2 starter.

There are no guarantees. Montreal is about the same size as Boston, but falls into baseball’s small market category because of poor attendance--the Expos are averaging 17,384--and comparatively poor radio and TV deals. Owner Claude Brochu, who is lobbying for a new stadium and has resisted overtures from groups in Charlotte and Northern Virginia, has said that revenue sharing will enable the Expos to take a more competitive and aggressive approach, leveling the playing field some, but the Expos can never throw caution into the St. Lawrence.

“Anyone who has ever balanced a checkbook should be able to understand our approach,” he said. “If we had re-signed all of our players and gambled on a one shot [championship], we would have needed to draw 50,000 every game and sign new TV and sponsorship contracts or we would have run out of money by the end of summer. It wasn’t and isn’t a viable option.”

Alou understood the restrictions when he left a position in the farm system to become manager in 1992. If it wasn’t the financial considerations that forced the Expos to unload players, the cultural and tax concerns have long made it difficult for Montreal to attract and keep players.

In some ways, however, that makes the manager’s job easier. Young players under Alou always play with an intensity that comes in part from “trying to impress and make more money,” the manager said. If not with the Expos, then with someone else.

Or as pitching coach Joe Kerrigan said recently: “Work here long enough and you understand how college coaches feel with players leaving after four years or even sooner if they go hardship.”

Will Expo U. ever get that roof built? Depends on the cost of tuition.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

A Big Difference in Pay

A look at how the Montreal Expos compare with the highest paid player at each position this season, with the Expos’ player listed last: *--*

Position High-Paid Player Salary Montreal Player Salary Catcher Terry Steinbach $4,200,000 Darrin Fletcher $1,125,000 First Base Cecil Fielder $9,237,500 David Segui $1,550,000 Second Base Rob Thompson $4,958,333 Mike Lansing $315,000 Third Base Matt Williams $6,550,000 Shane Andrews $135,000 Shortstop Cal Ripken $6,877,521 Mark Grudzielanek $135,000 Outfield Barry Bonds $8,416,667 Henry Rodriguez $210,000 Outfield Ken Griffey $7,500,000 Rondell White $300,000 Outfield Joe Carter $6,500,000 Moises Alou $3,000,000 Pitcher Greg Maddux $6,500,000 Jeff Fassero $2,800,000

*--*

Comparing Payrolls

The team salaries of baseball’s top teams, by winning percentage, and the Dodgers’ and Angels’:

Number: 1

Team: Montreal Expos

Record: 26-12

Payroll: $15 million

Number: 2

Team: Texas Rangers

Record: 24-13

Payroll: $46 million

Number: 3