The Marlins have added precisely four players to a 40-man roster that lost 100 games last season. Those four new acquisitions -- infielder Eric Wagaman, catcher Liam Hicks, infielder Max Acosta and first baseman Matt Mervis -- have boosted their currently NL-low payroll by ... well, zero, basically. Wagaman signed a split big league deal as a free agent. Hicks was a Rule 5 pick. Acosta came over in the Jake Burger trade. Mervis was swapped for Vidal Brujan after the latter was designated for assignment in Miami.
The only team currently projected for a lower payroll than the Marlins is the Athletics, and the A's have been active enough this winter that it still seems likely they'll make an addition or two and leapfrog over the Fish. (A's GM David Forst has already gone on record to say he's hopeful of another addition or two.)
Right now, the Marlins project for a $67MM payroll, per RosterResource. Their projected CBT number is $84MM. Both numbers are due largely to the $12MM owed to the since-released Avisail Garcia, whose four-year contract concludes in 2025.
Even by the Marlins' standards, the 2025 payroll is currently dipping to a new low when compared to recent seasons. Miami has trotted out payrolls of $84MM, $110MM and $106MM, respectively over the past three seasons. That's not much, of course, but those numbers are lightyears higher than the current projection. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic has suggested that the Marlins, like the A's, may need to spend some additional funds to retain their revenue-sharing status. They haven't been as stingy as the A's in recent seasons, but the Fish certainly aren't a paragon of aggressive roster maneuvering. Miami's recent offseason activity (or lack thereof) doesn't bode well for subsequent additions. Their lone free agent signing last offseason was Tim Anderson on a one-year, $5MM deal.
Miami did spend a combined $25MM on Jean Segura and Johnny Cueto the prior season, though that was under a different front office regime. Second-year president of baseball operations Peter Bendix has made it abundantly clear -- through actions rather than words -- that he had zero faith in the roster he inherited returning to contention after a surprise postseason berth in 2023.
The Fish waited barely more than a month into the 2024 season before trading Luis Arraez to the Padres, and when the deadline rolled around they traded away a staggering nine more players who'd opened the season on the roster. In a span of just three months, Bendix traded nearly 40% of his Opening Day roster (including JT Chargois and Huascar Brazoban, who were only off the Opening Day roster due to injury and visa issues, respectively.) Had Jesus Luzardo not been injured, Miami would likely have traded 11 of 26 players from the Opening Day club.
Given those trends, there's little reason to think the Marlins will spend any meaningful money on the upcoming player payroll. And while the notion of "buying" prospects is suggested far, far more than it is actually put into practice -- so much so that I'm often reluctant to dedicate much time thinking about the concept at all. However, given not only the specific position in which the Marlins find themselves but the broader context of this individual offseason, it feels like the Marlins are missing an opportunity if they're not more seriously trying to drive this type of transaction.
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The theory has merit. There are teams that have issues with bad contracts and have the necessary prospects to package and make it happen. Issue will be how good and how many prospects it will take to get Miami to “buy” them from the other team and inhaling that bad contract.
The challenge is bridging the gap between what teams are willing to sacrifice in prospects and what other teams are willing to accept for underwater contracts. Perhaps they should expand the comp pick system and awards extra picks to teams who take on the risk.
For example, if ARI was willing to give up their #15 prospect to rid Monte to MIA and MIA got a 3rd round comp pick then perhaps the trade value equalizes. Worst case, MIA eats the contract but gets 2 prospects. Best case they are able to trade Monte and pick up more assets. My example doesn’t represent true market values I’m simply demonstrating a mechanism for mitigating high value contracts.
Stud – The prospects should be plenty for the team taking on the bad contract. Besides, how would they possibly determine which trades qualify for a “Comp Pick” when there’s no way to prove a trade is a bad contract salary dump? What may be a bad contract to one person is not a bad contract to another, and you don’t know in advance if the player with the bad contract turns things around.
In general it’s pretty rare for teams to have such a low payroll that they are forced to take on bad contracts because they have no intention of trying to compete but don’t want to lose their revenue sharing.
If “the prospects” were enough to acquire these contracts then we would see more trades like them. Point is we don’t because the prospect capital is not sufficient for either team. There’s a whole system of determining comp picks regarding FA’s so the ability to do so regarding trading a contract is not in question.
Additionally, it’s not about “proving” anything. It’s about mitigating risk, which has real value in and of itself. The NBA does it and the NFL has the non-guarenteed contract stipulation which serves a similar purpose.
Comp picks are a solid vehicle for providing value for a team without wholly penalizing another.
The method for comp picks for free agents is indirectly based on the market value of the player. That kind of system doesn’t work with underwater contracts.
Furthermore, the eligibility of a qualifying offer is easily and clearly defined. As Fever Pitch Guy wrote, it would be very difficult to define exactly which trades would qualify.
Lan – With all due respect you are both wrong on free agent comp picks.
Under the OLD CBA the comp picks were based on free agent valuations, broken out between Type A and Type B.
Under the CURRENT CBA comp picks are not based on player valuations, but rather on QO rejections and the team statuses involving Revenue Sharing and CBT.
There’s a great article on it from Mark right here:
mlbtraderumors.com/2024/10/each-teams-draft-compen…
Lan – If you’re saying the market value is indirectly based according to whether or not they are eligible to receive a QO, then I fully agree. But if so there’s a lot of gray area there, for instance if a player is traded mid-year then they are not eligible for a QO. And players can receive a QO only once in their career.
I didn’t mention the old system, because it’s old, outdated, no longer in use, and frankly was a very lousy system.
Under the current system, the Qualifying Offer system is indirectly based on the player’s market value: the overall market itself creates the QO amount, the team’s determination of the player’s value mainly determines whether an offer is made, and the player’s determination of his own value mainly determines whether he accepts the offer.
It would be difficult to determine whether or not a player is worth his current remaining contract value compared to comparable current FA’s? I don’t think it’s difficult to speculate that Montgomery would not be worth $27 mill or Bellinger would be worth $30 mill as free agents. It does not have to be a perfect system. All it needs to do is facilitate more movement of contracts.
It would also benefit the players because you would be opening up opportunities for teams that want to spend instead of teams not wanting to spend logjamming roster spots throughout the league.
They do this in the NBA. It’s not that complicating.
Marlins are going to be bad… for a long time…
Trade Eury, Sandy and anything worth a dime in talent now then, fully kickstart the rebuild. This is the way.
No reason to trade Sandy now, let him rebuild his value first. He’s controlled for the next 2 years with a team option for 3rd at a reasonable price for a SP.
Eury and Sandy’s trade values are both down. Besides, if they do it right they can contend before Eury makes it to FA.
They’ve got four players who finished 2024 in the Top 100 prospects. If Thomas White, Noble Mwyer and Max Meyer all work out (or even if two of them do) that’s a decent start to a rotation.
Those pitchers are in addition to guys like Norby, C Agustin Ramirez and 3B Deyvision De Los Santos who played in AA and AAA last year and could be in Miami this year.
Only the Mets, Yankees and Dodgers can sustain winning at the MLB level despite a bad farm system. If you’re not developing young players, whether they end up playing for the MLB team or get used as trade bait, you’re going to be bad. IMO Miami has been bad because prior to Bendix arriving in November 2023 they hadn’t been very good at developing position players for a while.
They have a handful of top 100 prospect pitchers? At the rate of futility and executive tanking over the decade, it would seem to make sense to be 8+.
Tldr;
ATL is often regarded as a top 5ish pitching factory. The reality is the vast vast vast vast majority just don’t.
It’s difficult to re-train people’s minds that this is the reality, as a fan has spent hours and years hearing the prospects names discussed.
Atl recent past top P prospects.
(if some are long ago, shoot me, I’m old af, time is different when you get old)
Blair, Sims, Allard, toussant, newcombe, Graham, salcedo, Delgado, Muller, Anderson, Richie, wright, vizcaino, hernandez, jenkins, bird, soroka, gohara. And some other P who was a top 100 5 years, who did little to nothing in the mlb. (forgets name). Obviously there are others I can’t recall currently.
focus is always on the successful ones because uh, they end up successful.
~70% of top 100 prospects fail according to most everything i have read.
And I would say their definition of “success” is much much less than I would agree upon.
If all this sounds pedantic, then pass on by.
Prospects is obviously the course the marlins must do, among many other things. I harrow the thought of it being a teams only method.
As a fellow old guy, kudos on your recollections. Just a couple of corrections. Salcedo wasn’t a pitcher. Graham was never a top 100. Sims has had a nice career since moving to relief. Wright had a 21 win season but his shoulder died. Vizcaino was always injured. There was no Bird, you may be thinking journeyman Paul Byrd, who didn’t come up with the Braves, but pitched there for a couple of seasons later in his career. We traded for Newcomb, Gohara, and Toussaint. We used Delgado in a trade for Justin Upton.
Marlins need to move! It just hasnt worked in Miami
Their Stadium is beautiful. No need to move. Maybe Tampa does.
met – The Marlins have had awful ownership ever since John Henry bought them, that is the problem with the team.
@fever – they have bad ownership since the 1st fire sale in ’98 under Huizenga.
Also, they can’t move or else will be in breach of contract with the city of Miami.
Mjm – Yes but that fire sale in 1998 was a condition of the sale to John Henry, he didn’t want to inherit huge payroll.
The stadium location isn’t the best, but if there’s a winning product on the field they would draw big crowds. There’s a huge Latin population in South Florida, lots of Cubans who love beisbol.
Their stadium is nice but mostly empty. They have a couple of championships usually sandwiched between years of rebuilding. A move wouldn’t be a bad thing.
It seems to be the way the team is operated, rather than where the team is operated. They just need a plan, and there doesn’t appear to be one.
Fans showed up during the World Baseball Classic.
Fans showed up during the Serie del Caribe/Caribbean Series.
Even the upcoming Savannah Bananas games at loanDepot Park have sold out.
It’s not the fans that are the problem. It’s four consecutive trash ownership regimes.
bek – I agree with everything except your last sentence.
Henry, Loria and Sherman were trash regimes.
But Wayne? He turned an expansion team into a WS champion within 5 years while drawing 2.2M on average despite playing in a crappy open air stadium in South Florida.
@fever,
Wayne tore down the ’97 championship team the following season in ’98. In, ’99 he sold the team to Henry, who then sold it to Loria (using a loan provided by MLB )in 2001.
In its history, every ownership, minus the two championship seasons and 1 additional postseason appearance (short season), has failed to consistently produce a contender at the big league level.
If Bendix can turn the Marlins into how the Rays operate, I believe the Fans will eventually support the Team.
Mjm – The 1998 fire sale was a condition of the sale to John Henry, that’s the only reason it happened. The sale was approved on January 13, 1999. Zero chance Henry wanted to be the one to conduct the fire sale.
As a businessman, can you blame him? Who wants to take on all that debt?
And noooo the Marlins don’t want to emulate the Rays. Even when they are winning they don’t draw because of the constant turnover of star players, it’s a bad business model.
Hey Fever. Yes Sherman and Bendix want to do something similar to what the Rays do, and yes, that is not necessarily a good idea.
For the name on the front of the jersey to count, you need a history of names on the back. The Marlins have a long way to go. Conine, Pierre, Cabrera, Willis, Ramirez, Fernandez, Stanton, Alcantara are a start, but trading them away always undid a little of what they’d built. If Loria had kept Cabrera 2 more years how much more money would the ballclub have taken in ticket and merchandise sales?
It doesn’t matter how beautiful the stadium is if not enough people ever come to it.
MLB franchises have never drawn well in Florida, save for the first couple of years after the Marlins’ new stadium was built. They never support the Rays despite being consistent contenders and winning a couple of AL Pennants, and they haven’t supported the Marlins even during the rare times they have been competitive, such as when they won their two Championships and when they made the playoffs in 2023.
The people with the most money in Florida don’t actually live there during most of baseball season, while most of the retirees who move down there are, well, retired and living off their savings and fixed Social Security incomes.
@Lan –
The degree to which FL’s demographics are defined by retirees is often exaggerated in offhand comments.
The median age in the Tampa-St. Pete metro area is 42.4.
In the St. Louis metro area, it’s 40.2.
censusreporter.org/profiles/31000US45300-tampa-st-…
censusreporter.org/profiles/31000US41180-st-louis-…
@junior25
If I had a nickel for every time a mouthbreather proposed moving the Marlins out of Miami, I would’ve saved TikTok by now
This is one (of many) reasons there should also be a salary floor in MLB. It could incentivize teams to “buy” bad contracts to reach the salary floor in exchange for prospects…
Why would that be a good thing. Making crappy players with crappy contracts valuable? No thanks.
What it does is it gives the bas team prospects to go along with those crappy players. Therefore in a few years when the bad contract is up they have the prospects and will be a better team long term.
They do this in the NBA. And it works.
Floor but no cap? Why not just let the players demand what they make every year and the rule will be the owners have to pay it? Or the players can just show up whenever they feel like it.
Who said floor and no cap? You said that not him. The league needs both.
MLB could use both, but the MLBPA will never allow a hard salary cap. Adding a floor alongside the existing CBT soft cap is still a lot better than having neither one.
If you have a floor and a cap you can basically control salaries. You can make sure salaries go up year after year. There is no reason the union wouldn’t want this. Players still get paid.
Players clearly get paid more without a hard salary cap than with one. Adding both a floor and hard cap at once probably wouldn’t increase overall player salaries more than they are now. Although, if they could add a floor without a hard cap, that would be even better for them.
Besides, controlling salaries would only be a good thing for the union if they were the ones fully in control. They would have no interest in working with the owners to decide the amount of the cap (or the algorithm for it) in each CBA.
Look at the NBA. Players are getting paid plenty.
The salary floor, is 26 times the minimum salary. The existing floor needs RAISED.
MLB would need a lot more revenue sharing to be able to structure a salary cap / floor system that works well.
Miami Owner/GM are a disgrace to MLB. They could not be more insulting to the game, the players and the other franchises. Is there a goal ?
“Is there a goal ?”
For the owners, it’s just to keep collecting the revenue sharing money every year, enjoy the prestige and class status that comes with owning a professional sports team, and then years from now they (or their children) unload the franchise for 5-10x what they paid for it.
What I think Bendix is doing is a complete organizational teardown/rebuild, not just a teardown/rebuild of the MLB team. He knows ownership isn’t going to spend so they need to maximize player development in the minors, especially the development of highly paid 1st/2nd round picks or international signees.
The Marlins system was ranked #16 during the 2022 season. After that, things got worse for them in every season and midseason ranking before Bendix showed up in November 2023.
Now they have four prospects who finished 2024 in the Top 100. Per MLB, three of those guys, LHP Thomas White, RHP Max Meyer and RHP Noble Meyer cost them $15.3 milion. So they are paying players, they’re just not paying guys who have all arrived in Miami yet.
IMO what Bendix did/is doing is similar to what the Nationals did starting after they won the World Series (with an old MLB roster) in 2019. The Nats problem was that after Harper, Strasburg and Turner the best (and pretty much the only) players to come out of the system were Giolito and Fedde. Unless you’re going to spend like the Mets, Yankees and Dodgers that’s unsustainable.
Nats had an old roster, a bad farm and an ownership wanting to sell the team after 2019, until they sold off all valuable players and rebuilt. But in those years, the Marlins had a very promising young core. They just teared it down before achieving anything. You just can’t keep rebulding without making the necessary push.
What years are you thinking about? Because in 2019-2020, the Marlins young core (under age 25) players consisted of Alcantara, Pablo Lopez, Zac Gallan, Jordan Yamamoto, Harold Ramirez, Lewis Brinson, Jazz Chisholm and JJ Bleday.
The Marlins “young core” were three very good pitchers. Position players? Notsomuch. The only way that organization was going to win much of anything was 1-0. As I wrote in another post, the Marlins problem was they couldn’t develop position players.
Alcantara, Pablo Lopez, Zac Gallan, Jordan Yamamoto, Harold Ramirez, Lewis Brinson, Jazz Chisholm and JJ Bleday. They look like a good young core to me. It is very rare to develop a whole roster out of the farm. You listed 8 players to fill 8 out of 15 critical positions (9 batters+5SP+1CL). That sounds already a good foundation to be more aggresive. As I recall, in those years Marlins were envisioned to be serious threats to Braves and Phillies had the front office managed the team properly. If those eight were not enough, the current mix of 4 TOP100 prospects won’t be enough either.
I mean, the only way that you can compete with a low budget is to be as efficient as the Rays. But the Marlins are poorly managed. And you are posting like the Marlins are doing the right thing. No, they went back further into a new rebuild and that is a failure.
Avisail Garcia. Detroit’s “Baby Miggy” until certain (….) led him elsewhere.
The staggering money squandered on Maxi and Mini….
Not really. Look at their career earnings in relation to their career stats.
This is bad for the sport. Let’s promote losing and not spending. That won’t invite talent to pro baseball nor to the Marlins. Do something owners!
In baseball, the way for 99% of teams to win is through drafting and player development, not free agency. TV money isn’t going to get any better than it is right now, and for most teams that income is going to get worse. So the emphasis on player development in MLB is only going to increase.
MLB and the MLBPA have implemented rules to discourage tanking. What the Orioles and Astros did to get a high first round pick multiple years in a row can’t be done anymore.
Even if those rules didn’t exist, baseball is just different than the NFL and NBA. The percentage of highly drafted/ranked players who are “busts” or late developers IMO is higher and paying players more money isn’t going to change that. MLB scouts are often doing what college football and bball coaches do in recruiting. They’re trying to predict whether an 18 year old kid is going to be good. Sometimes you’re just going to be wrong, and other than if it’s because of injury, you may not ever truly know why.
I agree on much if what you wrotw. The bottom line needs to improve. Teams just collecting revenue sharing and a low inclination to make the playoffs hurts the larger interest to the sport. You want more talented players fighting for roster spots. Increasing spend and winning promotes that interest to compete for involvement. But when lesser is accepted it won’t promote growth. Rising tides raise all ships.
Montgomery could be a very interesting candidate for this idea.
I don’t think that Stroman is. Stroman’s $18 million player option for 2026 is triggered if he pitches 140 innings in 2025. It’s setting a team up for conflict with Stroman if he pitches poorly enough that a team clearly doesn’t want the 2026 player option, but well enough that he’s plausibly a back of rotation starter (especially for a bad team). The Marlins have enough problems without taking on that potential mess.
Forgot to add that Stroman approximating his 2024 performance would almost perfectly set up that sort of conflict over the vesting option.
He wasn’t good (1 fWAR, 0.7 rWAR) , but was durable enough that he pitched 154 innings.
Building on the mention of the Marlins’ weak bullpen: another strategy for the Marlins could be to sign some bounceback candidate relievers who are middle to lower tier free agents. (Ideally guys whose markets are light primarily due to injuries or one bad year.) Should be available on 1-year, or at most 2-year, contracts.
Wouldn’t expect to hit on all of them, but any of them who perform well in 2025 should be solid trade candidates at the deadline. There’s also *some* in-season market for decent relievers.
People like to talk about xyz ruining baseball. The real thing ruining baseball is the hunt for profit. From the ever prevalent advertising logos on jerseys and helmets to owners just buying teams to make money, the sport is being ruined by people who are using it as an asset.
I’m not sure how you enforce it, but teams should make a small profit for their owners and the rest of the money should be put back into the team (and league if you’re a bigger market team like the Yankees/Mets and Dodgers)
Great article, Steve! Examples were spot on. This can’t be the Marlins’ whole strategy, but it should clearly be a tool that is part of the plan.
The problem is that many owners are more interested in income than they are in winning.
There are dangerous parallels between how the Expos drew and the Marlins. That park is not easy to get to.
Sandy will be a Met in 2026. Possibly this summer if he’s back to his old self. They have the prospects to ship and Mets-Marlins have done deals. Piazza, Delgado to name a couple. Mets aren’t going to win a WS with this starting pitching staff.
Good article. What ever happened to the Baty to As to get rid of Marte? Stearns at the helm is a proven risk taker. This year it looks like he is rejecting the comfortable Alfonso being on the team to save money. Why not trade in division to send off Baty to Marlins and use money elsewhere to avoid the Mets getting so dinged for their spending by the league.
The Marlins and Rays have to be where they are due to tv ratings because their attendance is low. If Tennessee and Charlotte have equivalent markets it is probably a time to consider one or both teams there.
Very naïve thought.
The Braves don’t have much dead money, but they do have David Fletcher at AAA making $8M. If they could offload him with a mid-range prospect, that would be useful. They’re so close to the first threshold that saving $8M would be really helpful.
Or maybe they should just sell the team to someone who cares even slightly about not only winning baseball games, but not putting forth an embarrassing product on the field.
I haven’t logged in to MLBTR in months.
After looking at the comments here, I’m reminded why.
Good article. Lots of.research and thought.