Former Cleveland Indians minority owner John Sherman was officially voted as the new owner of the Kansas City Royals on Thursday by Major League Baseball.

Sherman purchased the Royals back in August for $1 billion dollars after spending three seasons with the Indians in a non-controlling ownership role alongside Larry and Paul Dolan.

However, before purchasing the Royals, Sherman was on his way to becoming the controlling owner of the Cleveland Indians according to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred.

John Sherman’s approval was unanimous (they all are) and Rob Manfred confirmed our reporting that Sherman had an agreed upon path to take over the Indians.

Again, more to come soon. After I eat a sandwich.

— Sam Mellinger (@mellinger) November 21, 2019

Larry Dolan bought the Cleveland Indians in 2000 for $323 million from Richard Jacobs. The team has won five American League Central Division championships as well as the 2016 American League pennant. Dolan is now 88 years old and the team is currently run by his son Paul, who is the chairman/CEO/controlling owner of the Indians.

The team is now worth $1.2 billion dollars according to Forbes.com but there hasn’t been any substantial rumors about the team being up for sale. In an interview this past spring with The Athletic, Dolan was asked about potentially selling the team at some point.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know that we planned to own it for 20 years. You just don’t know. There’s no plan not to own the team. I’ll put it that way. My parents are aging, so things could happen.”

With this report now emerging that Sherman was heading towards purchasing the team, it’ll make people start to wonder if the Dolans are finally ready to sell the franchise. Now being worth over three times the value of the original purchase nearly 20 years ago and the team perhaps heading towards another rebuild in the coming years, it would be wise to cash in at this point.

The Dolans would likely want assurances, being from the Cleveland area that whoever purchases the team will not move them out of the city with cities such as Montreal and most recently Orlando wanting to bring baseball to their respective towns.

Paul Dolan released a statement after Sherman was officially approved but didn’t comment on anything else although I’m sure the media would definitley like to hear about this developing story.

Statement from Paul Dolan on John Sherman being approved as Royals owner today. Indians will not comment further. pic.twitter.com/wMjYvoUZZr

— Zack Meisel (@ZackMeisel) November 21, 2019