Cote: Young, low-budget Marlins open spring as biggest underdogs in Miami pro sports history

Miami Herald

17-02-2025

If sports did not invent the underdog, it certainly has provided the greatest stage for the very notion. This is where disregarded athletes and teams across time have overcome seemingly impossible odds to achieve greatness. Well, sure, the disregarded usually are that for a reason and fail as expected. But when they don't and shock the world instead — those are the instant folk heroes we embrace above all others because they most represent us.
The 'Miracle Mets' winning the '69 World Series. Rocky Balboa. The 1980 U.S. men's hockey team. Rudy and Notre Dame. Appalachian State beating Michigan. Joe Namath's Jets making good on that guarantee.
Whatever you think of when sport's biggest underdogs come up brings us to the oddly named suburb of Jupiter, 80 miles north of Miami, and Monday's first full-squad work of spring training for the Miami Marlins.
Spring is sprung full of optimism with most baseball teams, and the Marlins are no exception. It's just that nobody outside of this team shares the rosy view.
'We're more than happy to play the underdog role,' said new manager Clayton McCullough on Monday.
He better be, for he now pilots the youngest, most inexperienced, biggest underdog team South Florida has seen, in any professional sport, ever.
The Marlins embrace the long odds ... because what choice do they have?
'We're super young, super hungry,' said Connor Norby, 24, projected starting third baseman. 'We feed off of that. It's going to be a group people are excited to watch. Everything people think we can't do, we're going to do at a high level.'
Miami may well have only one player on its 26-man opening day roster who has had his 30th birthday. Outfielder Jesus Sanchez, 27 and a Marlin since 2020, is the de facto wise old veteran in the lineup and the only proven big-league hitter.
'I think we're going to surprise a lot of people,' said Sanchez.
Opening day starter Sandy Alcantara, back after missing last season to Tommy John surgery, is the Marlins;' one and only star player by any definition.
Which of course means Alcantara may be traded next for prospects, because that's what the Sherman Marlins do.
Asked about that possibility Monday, principal owner Bruce Sherman and president of baseball ops Peter Bendix danced around the topic like experienced ballroom partners.
'Sandy is here right now,' said Bendix. 'I'm thrilled he's here.'
Sherman: 'Sandy is under contract; I'm the one who extended him. He's our franchise right now.'
Right now.
Rote optimism aside, this is what the absolute bottom looks like in pro sports:
A franchise owner, Sherman, unwilling or unable to spend on player payroll at a level that even pretends to approach competitive MLB standards.
A resulting team full of inexperienced kids trying to learn on the fly to be major-leaguers.
And a coming baseball season of hopelessness in Miami for a club given no chance but to fail in the mighty National League East, where the big-spending Phillies, Braves and Mets are really good and even the Nationals are coming on strong and spending while the Marlins shop the bargain bins with coupons.
The Marlins' master plan to trade pricey veterans for cheap prospects is building for a dubious future that may or may not ever arrive. And when I say the cub is given no chance as is, in the present,. I mean it quite literally.
The respected organization, Baseball Prospectus, utilizes sabermetric analysis in its annual Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm (PECOTA) to forecast won-lost records and project playoff likelihood and such.
The Braves are given an 88.3% playoff chance, the Mets 85.7 and the Phillies 52.2.
The Marlins are given a 0.0% chance, one of only two teams (Colorado) in the no-hope bin. Miami is given the same chance to make the MLB playoffs in 2025 as your beer-league softball team.
'I know what all the won-lost projections are,' said Sherman (his team's is 62-100). 'I think we're going to win a lot more games than you think we will.'
What else can you say if you are an MLB owner whose total 2025 player payroll as of Monday ranks a dead last 30th at $47.1 million? That is 30% of the MLB average of $158M per team player payroll. (For further comparative purposes, the Mets, Phillies and Braves spending is all top 10, with their combined payroll at $800 million.
Sherman, admirably with a straight face, bragged to assembled reporters Monday that the club has made lots of new front-office hires and will now have MLB's second-biggest weight-training room.
(Dear Bruce: Fans don't care about that. They do care that you once again failed to spend on any notable free agent bats to improve what looks to be an historically bad offensive lineup.)
'Everybody wants you to sign every free agent agent available,' Sherman said..
No. Wrong. But fans do have a right to expect that the team owner might sign a couple or three good ones. Might at least double the player payroll (dreaming here), even though that would still put Miami's about half of the MLB average. As is, Sherman's spending is so egregiously dismal that baseball and the players' union ought not stand for it.
Fans' opinion of Sherman and his gutter-level spending is reflected in home attendance that last year ranked 29th of 30, beating only the A's team in the midst of jilting Oakland.
The Marlins are not even assured of selling out Opening Day March 27 vs. the Pirates, despite a delicious Alcantara vs. Paul Skenes pitching matchup. That's why there will be lots of bells and whistles, including Dan Marino throwing out the ceremonial opening pitch and a postgame concert by Luis Fonsi and Flo Rida.
Anything to disguise the team itself, the one given the 0.0 percent playoff shot.
The Marlins' youth overhaul is so extreme there is a large poster in the clubhouse with the faces, names and titles of 74 spring-training personnel, so all the new young players might get to know them quicker.
'They could use name tags in here,' kidded Marlins broadcast analyst Tommy Hutton as new players roamed the clubhouse for the first time. (At least I think Hutton was kidding.)
These Fish will need a cocktail of great health, immense luck and perhaps some magic (the Miami Merlins) to surprise in '25.
The realistic hope is that, even surrounded by losing, the raw young Marlins may rise up to either be surprisingly good or at least OK this season or, more likely, to be lovable losers easy to root for.
The best plausible hope is that this is a team of underdogs Miami rallies behind because they play hard like hungry kids do and are fun to watch — because they are such underdogs, the biggest this market has ever seen.