LA Angels Thursday News Crash: Perfecto No

What makes Arte the worst owner in sports is that he purchased an organization with good practices in place and intentionally destroyed them to focus on marketing.The scouting and player development departments were excellent when he purchased the team and had provided a pipeline of excellent players who were the key component in winning a WS. The Farm was really good. It was all in place and it led to a first 8 years of significant success. He knew enough to rely on the good people around him at first and this led to the glory years. The structure was good enough to sustain success for a time.

Over the years, however, I suspect that early success Fed Arte’s ego and he began to believe he knew better than the baseball people he had in place. He then dismantled the systems or failed to pay to upgrade them with the newest technology. He got rid of solid baseball people replacing them with his stooges. He essentially took a well oiled and functioning machine and ran it into the ground-failing to maintain it and putting unqualified people in charge of running it (Carpino, Kuhl and Jolly).

So Arte’s mismanagement is not just omission, it’s commission and that makes him the worst owner in sports. He was given a well running Mercedes and he turned it into a jalopy.