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.
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.
Marlins need to move! It just hasnt worked in Miami
Their Stadium is beautiful. No need to move. Maybe Tampa does.
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.
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.
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.
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.