He consistently had the payroll around 70-75 million, which is about as much as you can expect in this baseball market. I suppose you can nitpick and say he could have raised it a little bit more, but it wasn't so low that you can accuse him of being horrendously cheap at the expense of the team's chances of competing until his divorce kicked in and payroll plummeted to the bottom of the league.
Not sure where you got your info, but he got over $70mil once since 2000 nad it plummeted $30mil the following season. The payroll was also never once in the top half of the league. Between 2001 and 2009, the teams payroll averaged 22nd in the league and an average payroll during that time of $54, 401,000. So I fail to see how you can say "He consistently had the payroll around 70-75 million", when the facts say something totally different 2001- 25th-$ 38,882,833 2002- 26th-$ 41,425,000 2003- 27th-$ 45,210,000 2004- 17th-$ 55,384,833 2005- 17th-$ 63,290,833 2006- 16th-$ 69,896,642 2007- 24th-$ 58,110,567 2008- 19th-$ 73,677,616 2009- 29th-$ 43,734,200
By the way, she didn't file for divorce until 2008, which was also the 1 year the payroll was above $70mil
