Mets owners refinance $250 million loan

After their books were devastated by Bernie Madoff’s infamous Ponzi scheme, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz had to sell 40 percent of the team and scale back the club’s budget for player payroll.

However, the new terms of their loan could ease the stress on ownership by alleviating them of the requirement to make a massive cash payment. This could mean the current owners will be able to continue to maintain their majority stake in the team.

There is something of a “silver-lining” for fans. Under the previous framework of the loan, the club was prohibited from significantly increasing payroll, but that is no longer the case. It could still be a while before the Mets return to their $140 million pre-Madoff heyday.

New York is likely to increase payroll slightly over 2013 this season. That kind of incremental advancement in spending appears to be the best-case scenario for fans hoping their team will return to their upper-tier spending habits. In the end, the new details of the loan are just another step in the team’s recovery from an embarrassing, and very public, loss that could have signaled the end of the current ownership group.

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