MLB Franchise Notes

In San Diego, Tom Krasovic reported Red Sox Chair Tom Werner, who “retained a minority stake in the Padres even after joining the Red Sox board, is no longer part of the Padres ownership structure.” Padres Chair John Moores bought out Werner’s 10% percent stake. Meanwhile, Padres CEO Sandy Alderson said that the team received $5-8M in revenue sharing last year and “probably will get another $5[M] this year” (SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE, 2/24).

TWINS: The Twins will surpass 1 million tickets sold by the end of February for the first time since ’92, the year after they won the World Series. They have also sold more than 2,500 new season tickets to top 10,000 (Sid Hartman, Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE, 2/25).

BREWERS: The Brewers sold 85,000 single-game tickets last Saturday, the third highest total in team history for the first day of sales, “despite inclement weather.” The team record for single-day individual ticket sales is 94,000 (MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL, 2/25). This season’s payroll “could approach” $70M, up from the Opening Day payroll of $27.8M in ’04, the year before Mark Attanasio bought the team. Attanasio: “We’ve done better on the business side, which has allowed us to raise the payroll. Now, we need to see it on the baseball side” (MLB.com, 2/24).

ROYALS: Royals President Dan Glass, who said when his family purchased the team in ’00 that he “wanted ‘to be very hands-on,’” recently said that his “goal is to hire good people and oversee the whole operation.” During Glass’ tenure, the team has hired and fired Senior VP & GM Allard Baird, hired GM Dayton Moore, “revamped its scouting and player development program, spent money on free agents and hired new people to head other departments in the organization.” Glass said the business side “is primarily most of my focus ... and I try to let the baseball hands make the baseball decisions unless there’s some financial ramifications” (Bill Reiter, K.C. STAR, 2/25).

Bay Among Players Featured In Pirates’ “We Will” Campaign

INT’L APPEAL: In N.Y., Jack Curry noted as the “internationalization of [MLB] continues and more Japanese players come here to play, teams have increasingly been hiring interpreters.” The Yankees, Red Sox and Mariners will each have two full-time interpreters this season. The Yankees, who will pay about $300,000 in salaries and expenses for the interpreters, also have a Japanese news media adviser, Isao Hirooka (N.Y. TIMES, 2/25).

CAMPAIGN ROOM: The Braves this week will launch their ’07 ad campaign, with the slogan “Welcome to the Bigs.” Braves Senior VP/Sales & Marketing Derek Schiller said the slogan — to be used in print, TV, radio and billboard ads — is meant as a “double entendre that speaks to the players making it to ‘The Show’ and also speaks to the fans coming out and seeing” the team (ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, 2/25)....The Pirates’ slogan this season will remain “We Will,” and the “focus will remain on the players.” Pirates Chair Bob Nutting said, “It’s all about baseball. That’s something we weren’t doing a couple years ago that we should have been doing all along” (PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE, 2/27).