Brown Comes With Added Price

Pages from the Kevin Brown notebook:

WHAT’S THE POLICY?

Having already guaranteed the 33-year-old right-hander $105 million for seven years, the Dodgers will now pay yet another costly premium for the premium pitcher.

Bill Foltz, the club’s vice president of finance and administration, said Sunday that “by Monday morning I expect to have messages from at least a half-dozen brokers.”

No one needs to be told how persistent those insurance agents can be.

And the Dodgers don’t have to be told that it would be a mistake to leave baseball’s largest contract unprotected by disability insurance.

“We’ll move on this pretty quickly,” Foltz said. “We can’t go with this [contract] uninsured. The financial liability if Brown was disabled would be devastating.”

At $15 million per year, the risk to the Dodgers is obvious.

The question becomes, how much of that risk do they want to assume?

The Dodgers currently have disability coverage on the high salaried Gary Sheffield, Raul Mondesi and Jeff Shaw.

Typically, Foltz explained, three-fourths of each year’s salary--$11.25 million in Brown’s case--is insured against a disability that would prevent the player from competing in the ensuing year. In other words, Brown would still receive his $15 million per year since the contract is guaranteed, but the Dodgers would get $11.25 million back through insurance.

The annual premium on three-fourths coverage, Foltz estimated, is $1 million. At 50% coverage, he said, it would be about $600,000.

This isn’t about the 15-day or 30-day or 60-day disabled list. In most cases, there is a 182-day disappearing deductible.

If Brown would be unable to pitch in 2000 because of a 1999 injury, the Dodgers would be covered. They would not be covered in 1999, so they are looking at six years of premiums.

“I don’t think we can insure the whole thing, but the prudent thing would be to insure some of it,” club President Bob Graziano said.

“Obviously, the decision to sign Kevin Brown was not a decision we took lightly. It’s a daunting amount of money, but that’s where the market is unfortunately. However, in terms of a pitcher you’d take the risk on, he fits that mold.”

Brown has been on the disabled list four times, but never for an arm or shoulder injury. He and Greg Maddux are the only pitchers to have worked more than 1,400 innings in the last seven years and never been on the DL for an arm problem. Brown’s insurability isn’t a problem.

Last year, preparing to join the San Diego Padres with free agency on the horizon, Brown and agent Scott Boras took out a $15-million disability policy that cost $200,000.

A healthy Brown ultimately agreed to his record contract, leaving the Dodgers to decide how much insurance is too much insurance.

THE MIKE PIAZZA FACTOR

The Dodgers gave $105 million and a blanket no-trade clause to a pitcher who works every five days but refused to include a no-trade clause and offered “only” six years at $79 million to Mike Piazza, one of their most popular players and a six-day-a-week catcher possibly headed to the Hall of Fame.

“As I recall, we never reached the point with Mike where a no-trade clause was the main issue,” Graziano said. “We offered an awful lot of money and still had a significant difference. We were looking at a player who could leave as a free agent at the end of the year and we were concerned about the contract length. If he couldn’t continue to catch in three or four years, then we had to think about what position he could play and it seemed like he would be best suited to become a DH in the American League.”

The Dodgers have put interesting spins on Piazza’s departure in the trade negotiated by Fox Chairman Chase Carey, but it still seems difficult to justify when weighed against the contract the Dodgers felt compelled to give Brown and the fact that only Sheffield remains from a trade that basically led to the roster and financial inflexibility that now haunts the Dodgers, who are expected to open the 1999 season with an industry-high payroll of about $85 million.

Piazza, in the meantime, received a seven-year, $91-million contact from the New York Mets, who obviously don’t share concerns about what position he will be playing in three or four years.

BUYING TIME

The Dodgers say one factor in the acquisition of a durable and dominant workhorse is that it allows them to buy time for rebuilding their farm system, which would ultimately lead to a recycling of the payroll with home-grown products breaking in at minimum salary.

New farm director Bill Geivett said, from his early observation, the Dodger system appears to have a limited number of prospects with impact potential at the big league level and an overall absence of depth.

The Dodgers will begin the rebuilding process without a first- or second-round selection in the June amateur draft because of their free-agent signings this winter, but Geivett said the process can be shortened by continued use of the international market. Jack Zduriencik, the club’s international scouting director, is currently attending the Asian Games in Bangkok, Thailand.

“I think we can win and develop at the same time,” Geivett said. “There’s some give-and-take in that, but Jack and his staff can make up some of the difference.”

In trading for Shaw and Carlos Perez, interim general manager Tom Lasorda was accused by some of stripping the system of its few prospects. He gave up Wilton Guerrero, Ted Lilly and Peter Bergeron in the Perez trade and Paul Konerko and Dennis Reyes in the Shaw deal.

“I don’t look at it in terms of ‘Tommy did this or Tommy did that,’ ” Geivett said. “He acquired two players who will help us at the major league level. Did he devastate the system? If you’re in a position where you can’t trade three or four minor leaguers without devastating the system, then you definitely need to create some depth so those hits won’t be as devastating.”

The Dodgers’ new farm and scouting staffs have begun work on that. Did $105 million buy them some time? The Dodgers are banking on that and more.