How the pandemic will affect the Marlins’ future. There’s potentially good and bad news
Say this about the Miami Marlins: They’ve had more than their fair share of misfortune for much of the past 15 years.
Jose Fernandez’s death in a 2016 boating accident, during the prime of his career, obviously extends far beyond a baseball tragedy; it’s a human tragedy that devastated many in our community.
From a purely baseball standpoint, as we explained here, the Marlins find themselves in the worst possible economy to have a television deal expiring. It’s the worst possible economy to try to sell naming rights for their stadium.
And now comes word, from The Athletic, there likely will be no revenue sharing in baseball this year, which typically provides a large share of the Marlins revenue.
According to sources, the Marlins annually received between $40 million and $50 million in revenue sharing between 2015 and 2017, and that figure has increased to the $70 million-plus range the past two years as the revenue gap has widened between the highest-revenue teams, such as the New York Yankees and L.A. Dodgers, and the lower revenue teams, such as the Marlins, Tampa Bay Rays and Pittsburgh Pirates.
Under normal circumstances, teams share 48 percent of net local revenue. The Marlins’ local revenue is among the lowest in baseball, if not the lowest, and Miami has historically been one of the biggest beneficiaries of revenue sharing.
Per The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich, “as part of an agreement in March, the union granted permission for MLB to make changes to revenue sharing for 2020 and 2021, within reason. The idea was to provide MLB the leeway to make extraordinary decisions to help baseball return. If certain clubs were in particular need, MLB could more easily redistribute funds.”
And the Marlins’ misfortune, not of their making, also includes this:
Because of bad luck, the Marlins will need to pay Wei-Yin Chen far more than they otherwise would have had he remained on the team for spring training.
With Chen, the Marlins’ decision to release him in November — with one guaranteed year left on his contract — means they must pay him $22 million this season under any circumstances. That number would decrease slightly only if the Seattle Mariners promote him to their big-league team this summer; they signed him to a minor-league contract earlier this offseason.
If the Marlins had brought Chen to spring training, instead of releasing him last winter, they would have been required to pay him only part of his $22 million salary that he’s owed in the final year of his contract, presuming a full big-league season isn’t played this year.
If the entire 2020 season is canceled and Chen was still on the roster, the Marlins would have owed him less than $1 million of the $22 million. And if half the season is played, they would have owed him $11 million, or whatever amount applies under a global baseball/union agreement that will need to be negotiated for a season to be played.
But who last year could have anticipated a global pandemic (COVID-19) in mulling the future of Wei-Yin Chen?
The Marlins, understandably, determined last November that Chen — who was signed to a five-year, $75 million deal by former ownership — would not help them in the final year of his contract and decided they would rather swallow the $22 million he’s still owed instead of using a valued spot on the 40-man roster to keep him.
But enough with the bad news! The good news is that:
A) The Marlins’ sponsors have stood by them during the coronavirus pandemic and
B) The Marlins are better positioned than many other teams to emerge from this crisis because they don’t have albatross contracts on their payroll, once Chen comes off the books in five months.
The Marlins’ payroll commitments this season were expected to be $78.7 million — $56.7 million for on-field payroll (according to spotrac.com) and the $22 million for Chen. That on-field payroll number would be 29th in baseball, less than $1 million ahead of the No. 30 Orioles, though the Chen payment shouldn’t be glossed over.
The Marlins, to their credit, spent the money that came off their books this year (Martin Prado and Starlin Castro) by signing Jonathan Villar, Jesus Aguilar, Corey Dickerson, Brandon Kintzler, Yimi Garcia and Francisco Cervelli.
For 2021, their only big-league player commitments on their books are $9.5 million to Dickerson, $5 million for Miguel Rojas and $4 million for Kintzler, which is a team option. That’s just $18.5 million, if the Kintzler option is exercised. Villar and Garcia will be free agents.
Three of their key young players — Brian Anderson, Jorge Alfaro, Garrett Cooper — are on pace to be arbitration eligible for the first time after the 2020 season, but none will break the bank.
Aguilar, Ryne Stanek, Jose Urena and Adam Conley also will be arbitration eligible.
(Keep in mind that if there are no games this year, anyone currently on a 40-man roster, 60-day injured list or an outright assignment to the minor leagues with a major league contract would receive 2020 service time equaling what the player accrued in 2019. If a partial season is played, service time would be the equivalent of what the player would have received over a full schedule.)
Every other young player on the roster will be under team control and very cheap.
So it’s quite realistic for the Marlins to have a payroll below $50 million in 2021 and conceivably be competitive if most of their top young prospects closest to the majors (position players Jazz Chisholm, Lewin Diaz, Monte Harrison and Jesus Sanchez and pitchers Sixto Sanchez, Edward Cabrera, Nick Neidert and Jorge Guzman) fulfill expectations in 2021.
And that might be the most likely scenario, with the pandemic delivering a gut-punch to every team’s finances.
The Marlins declined to comment on the team’s financial outlook because they believe it’s premature to do so yet without knowing if the season will be played.
But even amid the bad luck, the Marlins — who have generally handled their rebuild intelligently — are in better position than some teams because with Chen gone, there’s not a single remaining bad contract on their books.
Imagine, for example, having to pay injury-prone Giancarlo Stanton between $25 million and $32 million each of the next eight years, which the Yankees will need to do?
The Christian Yelich trade was obviously regrettable, but credit this regime for having the foresight to dump that Stanton contract, with Stanton managing just 18 games for the Yankees last season.
The best hope now could be going with the high-end kids in 2021, then supplementing them with a quality free agent or two in 2022 when the economy rebounds and when the young core - if they’re what they’re cracked up to be - is ready to contend for something meaningful.
DRAFT TALK
▪ We hear the Marlins hold Texas A&M left-hander Asa Lacy in high regard.
And MLB.com’s Jim Callis projects him to Miami with the third pick in the June 10 draft, with Baltimore taking Arizona State first baseman Spencer Torkelson No. 1 and Detroit selecting Vanderbilt outfielder/third baseman Austin Martin No. 2.
“The Marlins’ choice could simply come down to whichever of Torkelson, Martin and Lacy remains on the board at No. 3,” Callis said in his mock draft.
Lacy is 14-5 with a 2.07 ERA in three seasons with 86 hits allowed, 68 walks and 224 strikeouts in 152 innings. This season, before coronavirus ended the college baseball season after a few weeks, he was off-the-charts good: 3-0 with a 0.75 ERA in four starts, with nine hits, eight walks and 46 strikeouts in 24 innings. Control would be the only concern.
With the Marlins, he would immediately join two other former Miami first-round picks, Trevor Rogers and Braxton Garrett, as the top left-handed prospects in the organization.
Baseballprospectjournal.com says the 6-4, 215-pound lefty “throws a mid-90s fastball, a big breaking curveball, slider and deceptive changeup from a low-effort delivery. He had a big sophomore year, and if he can dominate hitters this spring, he will be in consideration for the first overall pick in June’s MLB draft.”
▪ Pitching prospect Jordan Holloway was among a handful of Marlins players who attended the first day of voluntary workouts at the team’s Jupiter complex.
This story was originally published May 19, 2020 at 5:32 PM.
