The temptation is to say there they go again. The Florida Marlins are dismantling their team yet again, and this time they didn’t even win the World Series.
They did it the first time in 1997, starting just hours after they won the World Series. For their next act they demolished the team that won the 2003 World Series, though they waited longer before committing the dastardly deed.
The Marlins, however, say this is not Demolition III. The appearance, they say, is deceiving. But they have created the appearance by shedding players with lightning-like speed.
They released Sergio Mitre the day after the season and traded Josh Willingham, Scott Olson, Mike Jacobs and Kevin Gregg in a two-week span before mid-November.
When they traded the players who helped them win two World Series, the Marlins acted to slash their payroll. This year they didn’t have much payroll to slash. It’s not easy to subtract from $21 million.
But the Marlins are looking ahead. They had 16 players eligible for salary arbitration when the season ended, and they acted to keep the payroll from ballooning, shedding the five players.
“We definitely have our revenue and payroll challenges,” Larry Beinfest, the president of baseball operations, said. “Our payroll is going up.”
But Beinfest quickly offered another explanation for the roster changes. The Marlins, he said, want to improve their pitching, defense and speed this winter.
“We want to transform our team a little bit,” he said. “We want to use the spaciousness of our ball park with speed. We have to improve our defense. But we’re dealing from areas of strength. We feel we have people coming from our system. We want to make sure the application of resources are in the right places to be as constructive as possible.”
Of the players the Marlins traded, Olsen made the most starts of any of the team’s pitchers, 33; first baseman Jacobs just missed leading the Marlins with 32 home runs and 92 runs batted in and closer Gregg had 29 of the team’s 36 saves.
Matt Lindstrom, who had five saves in five September chances after replacing Gregg and a 1.64 earned run average the last three months of the season, will be the closer next season. He is not eligible for salary arbitration.
“Matt Lindstron will be given every opportunity to win that job,” Beinfest said. “When Kevin Gregg’s knee gave way in September, Matt did a good job. We were encouraged by what we saw.”
Trading Jacobs dilutes the Marlins’ power, but they have a group of candidates to replace him at first, and they want to reduce what last season was a league-leading 1,371 strikeouts. Jacobs, who struck out 119 times, was one of five Marlins who finished with more than 100 strikeouts.
As possible replacements for Jacobs, Beinfest mentioned Wes Helms, Dallas McPherson, Jorge Cantu, rookie Gaby Sanchez and an even less experienced rookie, Logan Morrison, who he said was hitting .450 in the Arizona Fall League.
“We feel we’ll be okay there,” Beinfest said.
Olsen was expendable because the Marlins have a full rotation: Josh Johnson, Ricky Nolasco, Anibal Sanchez, Andrew Miller and Chris Volstad.
“Pitching is an area where we have organizational strength,” Beinfest said. “We have five starters we’re comfortable with plus a bunch of young kids.”
One of the three players the Marlins got in the trade for Olsen and Willingham is Emilio Bonifacio, a young second baseman, whom Beinfest assessed as being above average defensively and having above average speed. His arrival signals the likelihood of another trade.
Dan Uggla has been the Marlins’ second baseman for three years, but he is another on the salary arbitration list, making him an endangered species.
“This is not like the winter of ‘05 where we needed to get players back to play for our big league team immediately,” Beinfest said. “We can play right now as is. We don’t need to get players back right away who can help us in the majors.”
In deciding to emphasize speed and in the process sacrifice power, the Marlins are not without risk. They were one of two teams in the National League with more than 200 home runs last season, and the production kept them surprisingly in the division race into August. But speed it will be.
“We hit a lot of home runs; nothing wrong with that,” Beinfest said. “But we’d like to be able to score in different ways. We like to put pressure on our opponents with speed on the base paths. It’s something we saw with Luis Castillo and Juan Pierre in ‘03.”
With Bonifacio at second, the Marlins would have him, shortstop Hanley Ramirez and center fielder Cameron Maybin in the lineup, “all above average runners,” Beinfest said.
Then speaking of the Marlins’ moves generally, he added, “There has been a method to our madness.”
Masters of Miserliness
The Marlins have become masters at keeping their payroll low. They do it in part by using the 10a renewal clause in players’ contracts more than any other team. That clause is the one that led to the creation of free agency in 1975 (arbitrator’s ruling) and ‘76 (negotiations).
If a player has not agreed to a contract by March 11, his team can renew his contract for a year at a salary no less than 80 percent of the previous year’s salary. Each year the Marlins renew about 10 contracts.
One reason they get to so many renewals is the existence of a salary structure for players who have less than three years of major league service and are not eligible for salary arbitration. They are not the only team with such a structure – the Mets and the Braves, among others, have them – but they are more rigid with it.
Here are four players who have had their contracts renewed each of the last two years and their salaries the last three years:
Jeremy Hermida $327,000 to $380,000 to $395,000
Mike Jacobs $327,000 to $380,000 to $395,000
Taylor Tankersley $327,000 to $380,000 to $392,500
Dan Uggla $327,000 to $392,000 to $417,000
The Marlins have kept their salaries low because their low attendance generates meager revenue. However, higher-revenue days are on the horizon. The Marlins, who have tried under three different owners to get a new ball park, are finally on the verge of getting one.
David Samson, the team president, said the Marlins are awaiting the final judgment from the judge in a lawsuit that was aimed at blocking construction of a new park.
“We’ve won every single count that relates to baseball,” Samson said, “but the judge hasn’t issued the final judgment. We need that for the case to end.” But he added, “This is the furthest the franchise has ever gotten. We are very excited.”
In the meantime the Marlins have been negotiating with the city of Miami and Miami-Dade County on the park’s design, and when that step is finished in about two months, Samson said, they will address the construction documents
The park will be built in the little Havana section of Miami on the site of the old Orange Bowl, which has already been leveled.
“The next decision to be made is whether to open in 2011 or ‘12,” Samson said. “It’s a decision we hope to make in the next couple weeks. We had hoped for 2011, but there was a delay caused by the lawsuit, which was 100 percent frivolous and a waste of taxpayers’ resources.”
Bargain Balances Bust
One pitcher had an 18-5 won-lost record with a 2.62 earned run average. The other had a 10-17 record with a 5.15 e.r.a. One pitcher had a $14.5 million salary. The other made $405,000. Care to guess who the pitchers are and which one earned what salary?
The more successful pitcher was the lower paid – Tim Lincecum, winner in his first full major league season of the National League Cy Young award last week. The other pitcher – Barry Zito, he with the seven-year, $126 million contract who in the first two years of that contract had a 21-30 record with a 4.83 e.r.a.
“I think it’s all about adjustments,” Lincecum said of his San Francisco Giants teammate, who won the Cy Young award in the American League in 2002 and had a 102-63 record in that league. “Everybody goes through their ups and downs. You can’t do it every year. He was very good his first seven years. I think he’ll find his way out of it. He’s too smart and too good.”
No Pouting for Piniella
Lou Piniella, manager of the Chicago Cubs, knows very well this was the year his team was supposed to win the World Series and end the franchise’s 99-year streak without winning it, but he doesn’t know why the Cubs didn’t win it.
“I don’t know what happened,” Piniella said last week after winning the National League manager of the year award. “We pitched well all year; we didn’t pitch well. We caught the ball all year; we didn’t catch it the second game. We didn’t score any runs.”
The Cubs lost the division series in three games to the Dodgers, who scored 20 runs to the Cubs’ 6. In Game 2 the Cubs committed four errors that led to five unearned runs.
“Even if you win the most games during the season it doesn’t mean you’re going to win the pennant,” Piniella said, alluding to the Cubs’ league-leading 97 victories. “Look at the California Angels. They have struggled in the post-season also. Just because this was the 100th year everyone wanted to see it happen. It didn’t happen.”
Maybe it didn’t happen, he suggested, because his players and everyone else wanted it too much. “It was a disappointment to all of us,” he said. “It was over quickly – three games. I didn’t expect that, the players didn’t expect it, fans didn’t expect it.”
Piniella said he hoped to win the World Series in the next two years. “I’ve got a couple more cracks at it,” he said, referring to his contract. “Maybe we’ll get it done. I’d like to see that happen more than anything else.”
New Look for a Once Great Franchise
The Baltimore Orioles are changing their road uniforms so that their city’s name can appear on the front of their shirts. The Orioles unveiled other uniform changes as well last week. “Peter Angelos felt very strongly that we give the fans what they want,” Greg Bader, the club’s communications director, said, referring to the team owner.
But what Orioles fans really want is a winning team, which Angelos hasn’t given them in 11 years, or since they won the American League East title in 1997. It is the longest stretch without a winning season in the team’s 55 years in Baltimore.
Once the major league’s classiest and most respected organization, the Orioles have plummeted into disrepute under the Angelos ownership. Angelos used to bristle when he was said to be another George Steinbrenner, meaning his ownership style. But the comparison is no longer valid, and not because Steinbrenner is no longer active.
Even when they had losing seasons, the Orioles finished ahead of the Tampa Bay Rays in the A.L. East. That happened the first 10 years of the Rays’ existence. But now the Rays have rocketed past the Orioles, leaving them in the dust that has collected around Angelos and his woebegone franchise.
Money for Manny – and His Agent
What were the Los Angeles Dodgers thinking when they reportedly offered Manny Ramirez a two-year, $45 million contract to stay with them? At best, it was an opening offer but not one that would even get the attention of Ramirez’s agent, Scott Boras.
When Ramirez forced a July 31 trade from the Red Sox to the Dodgers, it was widely believed Boras was behind it so that Ramirez could shed the two option years remaining in his contract. Ramirez could not be traded without his permission, and the Dodgers agreed to strike the option years to secure Manny’s approval.
The only way Ramirez could become a free agent was to get rid of the option years, and the only way for Boras to make any money from Ramirez was for him to be a free agent.
But the Dodgers’ offer of $45 million was only $5 million more than the Boston option years called for. How could Boras make any money from that deal? It was akin to the Alex Rodriguez opt-out from his Yankees contract a year ago. Only by negotiating a new contract for more money and more years could Boras make any money.
But maybe this view of the agent’s tactics is too harsh. Maybe he is acting in the best interests of his client. On the other hand, Ramirez didn’t accept the offer to stay in Los Angeles, which he said was like being in heaven, or something to that effect.
Come and See CC
The Yankees got a lot of attention when they made an offer to CC Sabathia the first day clubs could talk money with free agents. The reaction in the news media seemed to be “Wow, look what the Yankees did.” If they hadn’t made an offer quickly, the reaction should have been “Wow, what the heck are the Yankees doing?”
Nor should it have been a surprise that the Yankees offered Sabathia six years for a shade under $140 million. They knew they would have to exceed the $137.5 million Johan Santana got from the Mets last winter, and they weren’t going to play games and take a chance that someone else would swoop in and snatch Sabathia.
The Yankees know they made a mistake ignoring Santana when they had a chance to get him from Minnesota and aren’t about to make another one.
Chances are the Yankees won’t have to go any higher than their initial offer because it’s highly unlikely that anyone else will step forward with that substantial an offer. Sabathia reportedly prefers playing with a National League team on the West Coast, but the Dodgers won’t spend that kind of money, the Padres are seriously cutting back on their payroll and the Giants are stuck with their mistake – Barry Zito – and can’t do another such contract.
That circumstance could leave Sabathia with the choice of taking potentially less money to play where he wants or taking the Yankees’ offer and playing on the East Coast in the American League.
Meanwhile, in case Santana didn’t earn enough this year with his $19 million salary, he gets a $200,000 bonus for finishing third in the N.L. Cy Young award voting.