The rebuilding Marlins have continued to subtract from their big league roster this winter, trading Jake Burger to the Rangers and Jesus Luzardo to the Phillies. Since Burger wasn’t yet arbitration-eligible and Luzardo was projected for a modest $6MM in his second arb year, the trades were more about adding young talent than cutting payroll, yet losing even Luzardo’s estimated $6MM salary has an additional impact on a bigger-picture question facing Miami’s finances.
As observed by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal (using estimates from RosterResource), the Marlins have a luxury tax number of roughly $82.8MM. This leaves the Fish some ground to cover before they reach the $105MM threshold estimated as the figure representing 150 percent of the club’s reported $70MM or so in revenue-sharing funds. As stipulated by the league’s collective bargaining agreement, teams who receive revenue-sharing funds must spend at least 150 percent of those funds on player payroll, at the risk of facing a grievance from the players’ union.
It wouldn’t be the first time that the Marlins faced this consequence, as the MLBPA filed a grievance against the Marlins, Rays, Pirates, and Athletics in February 2018 based on the union’s stance that the clubs were simply pocketing a good deal of their revenue-sharing money, rather than reinvesting those funds towards player payroll. Rosenthal and his Athletic colleague Evan Drellich recently noted that that grievance was still pending in an adjusted form, though the most recent CBA saw the minimum spend rise from 125 percent to its current 150 percent figure.
The revenue-sharing minimum drew more of a spotlight this winter when the A’s started to increase their payroll, which was viewed as the team trying to hit that $105MM tax number and avoid any heat from the players’ union. The Athletics’ situation is a little different since their revenue-sharing status was reduced in the earlier years of the CBA while the team was looking for a new ballpark, and they are now back to receiving a full-fledged share of revenue-sharing funds in 2025.
The Marlins have generally been among the lowest-spending teams in baseball for most of their history, and spanning multiple ownership groups. Bruce Sherman’s purchase of the Marlins in 2017 was initially viewed as a possible light at the end of the payroll tunnel, though the sudden departure of CEO Derek Jeter prior to the 2022 season threw a wrench into that perception, especially since payroll expenditures were reportedly one of several sources of disagreement between Sherman and Jeter.
Miami did elevate spending a bit under GM Kim Ng and the team made the playoffs in 2023, but Sherman’s desire for a better farm system led to Ng’s departure after that season, and the hiring of Peter Bendix as the Marlins’ new president of baseball operations. Taking a page from Bendix’s former team in Tampa Bay, the Marlins seem to be moving towards a Rays-esque model of relying on a strong minor league pipeline to build their rosters, while only modestly spending on payrolls. Bendix’s arrival kickstarted yet another rebuild, as the Marlins have dealt several of their more experienced and higher-priced players over the last year.
As much as the Athletics’ winter moves were made with the revenue-sharing number in mind, acquiring Luis Severino, Jeffrey Springs, and Gio Urshela are also sensible from an on-field standpoint, given the club’s needs in the rotation and at third base. Considering that the A’s played solid baseball over the last three months of the 2024 season, the West Sacramento team might even have some darkhorse potential as a wild card contender if everything breaks right and the Athletics get another breakout or two from younger players.
The Marlins are in a different situation. While there is some interesting talent on the roster, it is very hard to imagine Miami contending in 2025, nor does contending seem to be in the front office’s plans within the near future as Bendix focused on overhauling the player development system.
Spending $22.2MM to get up to the $105MM threshold likely won’t translate, therefore, in any additions that will help Miami win ballgames in 2025. The Marlins could add a couple of lower-cost veterans on one-year deals, with an eye towards potentially trading those players at the deadline once the majority of their salaries have been officially tallied onto the team’s tax bill. With a nod towards the Marlins’ goal of restocking the farm system, Bendix could potentially look into trading for a bad contract or two from another team, with that other team adding some prospects as a sweetener to further entice Miami into absorbing most or all of the money owed.
Unsurprisingly, Bendix didn’t provide many details on the Marlins’ spending plans, telling the Miami Herald’s Barry Jackson and other reporters this week that “I’m not going to comment on what we might or might not do. Bruce continues to give us all the resources we need to build this franchise for sustainable success.”
Bendix also didn’t entirely close the door on the possibility that Sandy Alcantara could be traded, saying that “We never rule out anything. We listen to everything.” That said, Alcantara was told back in August that he probably wasn’t getting dealt this offseason, and Bendix noted that “Sandy is a really important piece for our organization. I’m really excited to see him pitch on Opening Day.”
Alcantara is the highest-paid player on Miami’s roster, as the 2022 NL Cy Young Award winner is owed $17MM in each of the next two seasons, plus there is a $21MM club option ($2MM buyout) on his services for 2027. This salary has naturally made Alcantara the subject of continued trade rumors, even though Alcantara didn’t pitch in 2024 due to Tommy John surgery.
Obviously the Marlins wouldn’t be trading the right-hander for a maximum return in the wake of this injury, which is why a deal this winter remains unlikely. If Bendix was to sell low on Alcantara now only to see him rebound to ace form in the early part of the 2025 season, that’ll count as a lost missed opportunity to gain the biggest possible trade package for the Marlins’ biggest remaining trade chip. Miami’s payroll might also factor into the equation here, as Rosenthal notes that trading Alcantara would leave the Marlins even further away from the $105MM revenue-sharing threshold.
Just as Bendix isn’t likely to openly state that Alcantara is available in trade talks, the PBO also isn’t likely to entirely shut down any offers because of basic due diligence. Bendix surely doesn’t want to limit options just in case a pitching-needy team actually is willing to part with a premium return for a pitcher coming off a lost season.
They wont remain in South Florida for much longer, will relocate somewhere else by 2035
Yeah that area should be underwater by then. And they deserve it.
Dumbest comment ever.
cincyfan85? yours?
11 years is a long time lol. i’m thinking back to back dumbest comments ever, a rarity
A DECADE isn’t “much longer”?! You have an interesting perspective of time! Being a Miami native it’s my opinion that the franchise should move. The population doesn’t really have roots in the area, and the fans will only come out when a championship is imminent. In the roughly three decades that the team has existed they have won two rings. I thought, ‘OKAY! GREAT! Fans will start buying season ticket packages’. Nope, both times the owners got disgusted and sold the team off. Just not a baseball city.
I live in the Miami area and I know there’s a ton of things to do but dang it sucks that they can’t draw and field a good mlb team by spending? Could there be any better destination to play in than a city with a retractable dome stadium that protects you from the rain during the hurricane season, major international city, tax free state on income, close proximity to Latin America, incredible nightlife and entertainment and a city that most would love to live in during the winter? Shame.
Every Marlins ownership group has preferred to spend little, guaranteeing they’ll make some money and occasionally stumbled into a championship run, instead of spending big to improve their chances of success. It’s a popular model for several teams.
I would just have to imagine the leverage the team would have of they had management that invested into the team. I mean they are in a great location to scout talent. I can’t imagine a better FA destination. Income tax free.. Nightlife. If they went heavy on drafting from Latin America they’d have a built in fanbase.
wonder if Miami fans would come if say someone similar to moneybags Steve Cohen bought the team and invested in top flight players. My fear is that still would not bring sustained season ticket holders. Maybe I’m wrong but I’d love to see Miami push the Mets and Phillies into a dogfight of a division similar to the AL East.
If the Marlins had an owner willing to pay for a Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor the fans probably would come out. The Marlins have finished top 5 in attendance in the NL 3 times and not since the first championship in 1997, which was a store bought, albeit reasonably star-studded team for its day. That team unfortunately also got Marlin fans to get used to not getting attached to good-to-great players
I’d say no. Top 5 in the NL (half the league) isn’t very good when they should have done much better when opening and during those playoff years.
You would think it would be a big baseball city but it’s not. Just like the rest of Florida. Not sure why baseball continues to fund these teams with funds when the city doesn’t want them.
i live in tampa bay area, and regardless of baseball, miami is an awesome place one of the best in the world. it’s not new zealand/banff and pretty everywhere but man is it interesting and has a ton to offer. both cities just have too much going on for people to go to baseball games regularly, especially since much of it is free
The issue is they spend for one year then constantly tear it down and rebuild. They never build upon their success, they simply stumble into it by accident then it’s almost like they realize, hey we aren’t supposed to be winning, then suck again.
If you have a good product people would go, Miami could be a force but they’ve never taken that 5 year period where they can spend and be a consistent draw.
Miami supports the dolphins like crazy, both the lightning and panthers are top 10 in attendance but both have been elite teams for a while now.
The Marlins should take on a bad contract or 3 and get prospects in return. This is what teams do in the NBA. That’s what the Athletics should have done too. It’s a good way to spend the money they need to spend now and then give themselves a chance to win in the future.
The A’s were a .500 team the 2nd half why would they not try in a weak division. You usually don’t get top 100 prospects for a bad contract and it sends a horrible message just 3 short years before moving to their home in LV.
Trying a little is fine. But they lost a draft pick for signing Severino. And they lost a pick trading for Springs. Those are not the kind of things a team that isn’t very good and doesn’t have much money to spend should be doing.
The players they signed and traded for were wrong but I don’t disagree with their strategy on trying to compete as opposed to tanking another year. There have only been a few successful tanks in recent memory but most of the time it just seems like a perpetual in between state of being horrible and being just good enough to compete.
Astros tanked and were successful
Cubs tanked and were successful
Part of the problem is you have to spend once it’s time to spend. That’s what the Orioles aren’t doing well enough.
But the new draft rules make that tactic much less attractive and unlikely to be successful. The White Sox 2024 debacle and 2025 draft position makes that painfully clear.
Exactly my point only a few. White Sox stacked all these prospects only to watch their team crash and burn. If you have a decent chance to compete for the division I think you go for it, you never know when your next chance will be.
The White Sox traded away almost all their talent for prospects. Thats going to pay off in a couple years. And when it does if they spend they will be a very good team. No they won’t get back to back number 1s like Strassburg and Harper but they are still doing it right.
White Sox have already reloaded their prospect pool into a top 10 system in the league.
I don’t think the Athletics have any chance whatsoever to compete in their division.
Reydey has it right.
By putting a better team on the field in 2025, the A’s have a better chance of getting public support for more public money in Las Vegas.
The smart investment is playing to be a 0.500 team in 2025 with an outside chance of winning the division with Tucker gone and deGrom a health risk.
I do think the A’s should use the rest of their spending to get extensions for Rooker, and maybe one or two of Langeliers, Butler, Gelof and Miller.
If I were the Marlins,
The A’s winning the division LOL I almost fell out of my bed.
Since the first grievance hasn’t even been resolved yet I’d imagine the Marlins will at least consider not following the rules. Ridiculous
Yeah, reading the beginning of the article, I was wondering how much of a penalty the grievance thing was. Then they say the grievance from nearly seven years ago is still pending. So who cares? If I’m the Marlins I keep doing whatever I want.
Yep. Doesn’t seem like they care one bit given the GM’s comments and the way they’ve approached the offseason.
“Miami did elevate spending a bit under GM Kim Ng and the team made the playoffs in 2023…”
Had to smile at this attempt to link a rise in payroll to the Marlins’ playoff berth in 2022. That team was just plain bad (-57 run diff) but got incredibly lucky in one-run games with a ridiculous 33-14 record. To nobody’s surprise the luck ran out in 2023 and the team collapsed.
Oops. The lucky year was 2023, of course, and the collapse came in 2024. Sorry for getting the years mixed up. But unless money can buy luck, payroll had nothing to do with the playoff berth.
There is something to be said for a team that does just enough to win a game night in and night out. It’s not all luck.
The Cardinals had the biggest gap between their Pythagorean win total and actual win total in 2024. And I saw the games I know why it’s because the bullpen handled their business when it mattered. It wasn’t luck.
With that -47 run diff in 2024, my guess is that luck runs out in 2025 and the Cardinals’ record will be less than gorgeous. In fact, I’m pretty sure that the Cards’ front office agrees with me. Which is why they’re dumping as many of the old guys as they can to save a few dollars.
The Cardinals are spending less thats probably going to lead to less wins not what you said. You are just making stuff up.
We’ll look at the record at the end of the 2025 season and see how much I made up. 75 wins looks like the most the Cards can reasonably expect.
They are spending less bozo. Thats going to most likely lead to less wins. But 75 at the most? Yeah I doubt it.
75 wins only if Arenado and Helsley are also dumped for prospects rather than major league pieces, otherwise 80 wins is more likely.
I think Helsley is the best reliever in the NL and the Cardinals should move him for a couple of MLB overall top 100 prospects. But reports suggest that Cardinals are not willing to move Helsley at this juncture.
I don’t think Helsley gets dealt until perhaps July. They want to give the team a chance to succeed. Trading Arenado is a bit different he wants out. But Helsley they will hold onto I believe.
The CBA may be a way for dividing revenues and managing salaries, but there remain manny incentives to do the minimum spend to enhance profitability, often at the cost of competitiveness. The ideal of an owner willing to spend because he wants a WS win just isn’t applicable to several teams–it’s bottom line with how much can I get from business, and how much the business can get from the taxpayer.
The Rangers bought a WS title. Dodgers and Yankees try to every year, but the Diamondbacks didn’t buy theirs, and the Rays went to the WS w/o spending.
San Francisco, San Diego, Philadelphia, Toronto, CHC, and Atlanta have healthy payrolls, and have not had significantly better outcomes than CLE, MIN, KC, BAL, or DET. Payroll doesn’t guarantee outcomes…but it ‘can’ increase the odds. But not nearly as much as many seem to think.
Talent and health are more deterministic of outcomes than money. But neither health nor talent are as easy to value/predict as money. Ergo, people can conflate dollars with winning easier.
There are as many cheapskates as there are rash-spenders, I’m not trying to undermine, cause you right as heck, but it’s not quite so black-n-white. To me, that is
i don’t see why atlanta is in that group. chronic winners with a payroll made up of sensible salaries. injuries are the only thing holding them back. never seen such injury problems this consistently and i’ve been following baseball since 1974
Rangers ran pretty much the same roster out there last year. What changed?
Regression from all their hitters, especially Adolis who might be cooked. Jung and Carter out for large chunk of the season.
Maybe a signing of Kyle Hart 2 years and $13 million might help add some payroll. Bullpen additions might also be welcome and a corner outfielder to replace the space Bryan De La Cruz filled before.
Sounds like John Henry still owns the team!
At least it’s not Jeffrey Loria anymore.
Can the Mariners interest you in a Mitch Haniger top 10/15 prospect!
If the Marlins truly need to add to payroll, Haniger is exactly the kind of player the Fish should be adding. There’s some potential upside.
no no … they need to bring back a player that did well for them a couple years ago in a position of need. They need to trade for Starling Marte. The last good cf they had. 100% perfect idea fills a position of need as they have been moving people out there to fill it since he left, increases payroll some, did well and i believe was a fan favorite and heck even has all the letters of the team in his name. What could be better 🙂
Haniger or a reunion with Starling Marte plus a mid-level prospect from the Mets.
The entire franchise is a joke. Just golden rule the entire 9 innings
MLB sold the Marlins to a cheap ownership group just cause they had Jeter prancing around pretending to be an exec for a few years.
So many avenues for the Marlins to spend enough money to reach their salary mark and improve their future prospects.
Sign Ha-Seong Kim for two years. Other teams are scared about what they’ll be getting in 2025; not the Marlins. If Kim returns and plays well right off the bat (pun intended), they’ll be able to flip him by eating the necessary money. If he sits on their roster for all of 2025 or returns without playing well, so be it.
Sign at least two if not three of the not-quite-closer type arms, like Kittredge, Martin, Minter, etc. and flip em at the deadline if they’re doing well while eating money on their contract to improve the prospect return.
Eat a bad contract, like Yoshida or even Javy Baez, but make that team pay for it in prospect capital. Who would the Red Sox give up to be rid of Yoshida? Who would the Tigers surrender to be rid of Baez? Even guys like Yuki Matsui; SD needs salary relief, take a prospect in return. Haniger is another….
Money talks in this market, and the Marlins can leverage their payroll flexibility to their advantage.
South Florida has bandwagon fans for all sports. People in Broward and Palm Beach don’t want to drive into Miami at night to watch a baseball game, especially if they aren’t good. When the team was gutted after both World Series wins, fans had even less to be committed to. I went to some games at Joe Robbie, never been to the new park.
There’s only maybe a handful of bats I’m potentially interested in signing, sign 1-2 of those guys, add a SP that can give you innings, and potentially be flipped, and 3 bullpen arms, and outside of minor league deals, I think that’s fine going into ST
Sign Jd Martinez, potentially take a flier on maybe seeing if Moncada has literally anything, Harrison Bader could be interesting as well, though maybe not as much as he would have been last year sign a SP, maybe a Kimbrel or a Jansen, and a couple of other bullpen arms that can help them hold some leads…I could also see taking on the remainder of a poor contract, depending what it is, and trying to get assets out of that, but that’s not really in the Marlins repertoire
It would be extremely dumb to move Alcantara now; they’re not going to do that. Maybe mid-way this year, but more likely, after the season/May 2026, if he’s healthy and in the range he was before this injury (not a clear TOR arm, as he had been for those couple of years prior)
Marlins could offer to trade Javier Sanoja to Padres for Boegaerts and De Vries.
Sounds crazy? Well it is. Padres would get out of $25 million in salary and Marlins would get a new best player and an elite young prospect.
Wow Bendix sure sounds like a hoot to work with. I would probably be miserable too working for that cheap-a$$ owner Sherman, who doesn’t give a flying-f about baseball.
Prudent for the owner to take on a small payroll management philosphy.
My gut says ownership gave Ng first dibs on employing it. She declined and the TB guy Bendix with the TB low payroll management philosophy pedigree transitions in.
As long as these two franchises are located where they are located this approach is logical (as proven by TB). Move to a market that draws fans leading to competitve spending generated from their own coffers and that philosophy may just change (sans the right ownership group is in place)