Cote: To Bruce Sherman as low-hope Miami Marlins open 33rd season: Spend more or sell team

Miami Herald

21-03-2025

Ah, spring! Opening Day, the words always capitalized. This is when the baseball poets with romanticized prose pay homage to 'America's Pastime.' The red, white and blue bunting decorating ballparks, the echoing crack of a bat, bags of peanuts cartwheeling from vendor's hands, pastoral fields of emerald green.
This is when hope springs eternal, when anything is possible.
Except in Miami, where baseball hope goes to die.
This is where optimism or high expectations for the dawning season would be so far-fetched as to be preposterous.
The one upside: Late afternoon Thursday in downtown Miami, the Marlins' 33rd franchise Opening Day will boast the best pitching matchup in all of MLB as ace Sandy Alcantara returns from Tommy John surgery to face Pittsburgh Pirates rookie of the year phenom Paul Skenes, who has ridden his 'splinker,' a splitter/sinker hybrid, and a 1970s mustache to instant folk-hero status.
The downside for the Marlins: Everything else -- starting with the likelihood Opening Day will be the beginning of the end of Alcantara's time here, the beginning of goodbye.
It is widely expected Miami will trade Alcantara after a handful of starts, when potential suitors (a.k.a. teams willing to actually spend money) are convinced he's fully healthy.
Alcantara is the only star left on what otherwise is a no-name, minor-league roster, the youngest in baseball, full of low-paid prospects because owner Bruce Sherman, no B.S., is so cheap the MLB players-union should file a grievance as Marlins fans -- the ones still around who may or may not fill the ballpark Thursday -- should be chasing Sherman with torches and pitchforks.
(Or at least displaying some sort of fitting outrage on Opening Day instead of benignly acting as if this situation is normal and not both a stain on baseball and an insult to fans.)
Plainly, Sherman should either get serious about spending and winning or sell the team.
And that message should come to him via the sport and its players union and also from fans, whose statement begins with low attendance but should also be heard loudly from fans at the games. Eight years of this owner has been eight years of low spending and wheel spinning and vague building for a future that never arrives.
As for Alcantara, Sherman and club president Peter Bendix can't even muster the nerve to pretend he won't be traded. Asked directly earlier this spring, Bendix said only, 'Sandy is here right now. I'm thrilled he's here.' Said Sherman: 'Sandy is under contract. I'm the one who extended him. He's our franchise right now.'
Right now and maybe for another month?
Congrats to Alcantara, at least, who deserves to be traded to a team that cares about winning instead of pitching great but losing because his hitters are swinging pool noodles instead of bats. Sandy should be leaving tire rubber on the pavement getting away from this franchise as fast as he possibly can.
In return for him the Marlins will get the usual 'top prospects,' who may or may not ever pan out but who, most importantly, will come cheap.
The ongoing latest Marlins fire sale has seen the departure of proven veteran players such as Luis Arraez, J.J. Bleday, Jazz Chisholm, A.J. Puk, Tanner Scott and Jorge Soler, not to mention J.T. Realmuto, Marcell Ozuna, Giancarlo Stanton and Christian Yelich -- with Alcantara now on deck to depart.
As for that bounty of 'top prospects' in return? Baseball America ranks Miami's current farm system a below-average 21st.
To the Marlins' credit, they at least are adept at trying to distract fans with shiny objects to divert attention from the club's inexcusably low player payroll -- which will sink even further when Alcantara and his team-leasing $17.4 million salary leave the building.
Dolphins legend Dan Marino will throw the ceremonial opening pitch. Flo Rida and Luis Fonsi will star in a postgame concert. A new 'Marlins Legends Hall of Fame' was invented. Press releases extol exciting new ballpark food items. Sherman bends over backwards, limbo-like, to note he has spent on staffing, infrastructure, technology, a player-development complex in the Dominican, and what now is the second-biggest weight room in MLB.
They spend on everything ... except good players and a competitive team. Priorities askew, perhaps?
The most recent Marlins embarrassment was a plan to have a 'practice squad ' of former pro and college players who'd be paid $150 a day to work with the club's Single-A team in Jupiter. MLB quashed the scheme.
It could have been worse. Based on the current roster, I thought they might be offering former college players 150 bucks a day to be in the Opening Day lineup.
When I say there is no hope for this season, the respected organization Baseball Prospectus agrees. Its annual Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm (PECOTA) forecasts won-lost records and projects playoff likelihood and puts the Marlins' postseason shot at 0.0 percent. In the rest of the loaded, big-spending NL East, the Braves are at 88.3 percent, the Mets 85.7 and the Phillies 52.2.
Look around at the broadest stroke optimism levels of the market's other four major professional teams relative to the Marlins' subterranean expectations:
Florida Panthers are reigning NHL champions and playing as if they aim to repeat.
Inter Miami and Lionel Messi are improved and flat-out expect to win the MLS Cup.
The Dolphins missed the playoffs after two straight years in but improvement is expected, demanded, as the team futures of Tua Tagovailoa, Mike McDaniel and Chris Grier may depend on it.
The Heat slogs through an uncharacteristically bad season but the winning history of Pat Riley and Erik Spoelstra earn credibility and the assumption of a bounceback year.
Only the Marlins inspire no hope, now or foreseeably, because the business model of this franchise's owner is to spend as little as possible even realizing the product he puts on the field will be unable to compete on a major-league level.
The Marlins ' 2025 total player payroll of $47.1 million ranks 30th in MLB. That's last. The active 26-man payroll of $31.4 million also ranks last. The MLB averages in both categories are $156.6 and $147.4 million.
Apologists might call Sherman's low spending necessary because the Fish have lousy attendance. First, I'd dare note a correlation; i.e. spending = winning = bigger crowds. Beyond that, it's nonsense that Sherman can't afford to spend more, lots more, even with attendance that ranked 29th last season.
The Marlins are expected to get at least $70 million in revenue sharing this year. The collective bargaining agreement model is that clubs spend 1 1/2 times their rev-share bounty on payroll, which would put Miami's reasonably expected payroll at around $105 million. In other words the Marlins payroll could be double or even triple what it is without Sherman needing a second job or a GoFundMe page.
The sum is that Marlins spending by this owner is an unnecessary and inexcusable disgrace.
Wait. Almost forgot about all that hope-springs-eternal stuff expected on Opening Day, so...
Play ball!