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Florida Marlins
Scouting Report
By the Numbers | Players To Watch | Projected Roster
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Despite all their salary dumping, the Marlins still have
some big-time talents, like defensive whiz
Johnson.
(Jim
Cole/AP)
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During a
Marlins exhibition game, a little plane circled above their
ballpark in Melbourne, Fla., pulling a banner that read,
WAYN'S A
CHUMP. Incorrect.
Wayne
is not a chump. He's a swami.
H. Wayne Huizenga said last June that his team would make no
money even if it won the World Series. All that came to
pass. The team won the Series. The team lost $34 million,
by the owner's reckoning. Maybe you're skeptical about his
numbers. Well, if
owning the Marlins is such a terrific business venture, how come
it's taken so long to find somebody willing to buy
them?
It looks as if the long wait may be over. Last Saturday
club president Don Smiley said he finally has assembled a
group of 10 to 15 investors who will buy the club for just
over
$150 million, a deal he hopes will be approved by the other
major league owners in June. The key to the sale was a
major cost-cutting initiative, as Dilbert might put it.
After the Series, Huizenga—who may stay on as a minority
partner—ordered the team's $52
million payroll halved. As a result, 12 players from the
championship roster are not on this year's team. Only one
pitcher from last year's rotation survived the El
Niño
winter, Livan Hernandez. The four new starters would make a
superb Triple A
rotation.
Is the dumping over? Probably not. The next step could be
to unload rightfielder Gary Sheffield and his gaudy
six-year, $61 million contract. Other teams are not
convinced of his value just yet. The Mets, for instance,
earnestly trying to win the wild
card, could have put Sheffield to good use. But they wanted
Florida to pay a third of Sheffield's salary. Those talks
went
nowhere.
There's only one piece of evidence that suggests the
Marlins maintain a modest interest in winning baseball
games. They held on to their expert manager, Jim Leyland,
who will earn $1.5 million this year. Clearly, Leyland is
underpaid.
The oddest relationship in baseball (platonic division)
must be the one between Leyland and Huizenga. Huizenga
bought a house that Leyland can use for free as long as he
is manager of the Marlins, allowed Leyland to use his
personal jet and his private
golf course, and gave him stock options in Republic
Industries, Huizenga's holding company. Even after the
off-season purge, Leyland has had nothing critical to say
about Huizenga. Still, the two are very different:
Leyland's consuming interest is
winning baseball games, Huizenga's is making money. How they
coexist under one roof is a
mystery.
Actually, a roof is the key to Florida's future. Huizenga
and Leyland believe the Marlins will never have a viable
fan base until they get a new stadium with a retractable
roof, to counter the storms and oppressive heat that make
summer baseball in
Miami unappealing to the suit-and-briefcase set. But such a
stadium would cost $350 million. The only group rich enough
to finance such a thing is the voting public, and Florida
taxpayers were in no mood to buy
Huizenga
anything. Well, now that it appears Smiley will soon be in
charge—Huizenga retaining just a small, insignificant
piece of the team—maybe they'll consider it.
Given the off-season filleting, it is surprising to report
that the 1998 Marlins are not awful. There's still a core
of excellence up the middle. Charles Johnson, the best
defensive catcher in baseball, hits for power. Shortstop
Edgar Renteria has
incredible range and is a good clutch hitter. Rookie Mark Kotsay,
who will play centerfield, is one of the most touted
prospects in the game. The combined age of those three is
70. There's newly imported young talent, too. But a bunch
of kids cannot replace
Moises Alou, Kevin Brown, Jeff Conine, Dennis Cook, Robb Nen
and Devon White, not in the short term. Of course, the
newcomers don't cost
$21 million,
either.
A few years from now, if the new owners' pockets are even
half as deep as Huizenga's and if the farm system produces
big league talent, the Marlins could be a force again. If
the team does anything this year, it will be largely
because of Leyland's
resolve. During one three-year stretch in Pittsburgh, Leyland
showed he could nurture talent, that he could make a little
seem like a lot. The Marlins are not the defending
champions this year, not really. They're underdogs, and
Leyland will make the most of
that. If he's not happy at the end of the year, he can
always quit—and pick up a $500,000 exit bonus on his way
out the door. Don't act so surprised. You knew there had to
be a money angle in
there
somewhere.
—by Mark Bechtel
Scouting Report | By the Numbers | Players To Watch | Projected Roster
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