The Miami Marlins, and owner Jeff Loria have made two substantial offers to two of this year's top free agent prizes. There are reports that they offered SS Jose Reyes six years and 90 million dollars, and a nine year deal to slugger Albert Pujols rumored to be worth less than 200 million dollars. Since he is seeking a deal to be one of the highest paid players in the sports, his offer may be competitive but not quite enough to get a deal done.
Frankly, that may be the whole point. There is a lot of conjecture out there that the Marlins are trying to change their perceptions as perennial cheapskates. Let us not forget this is a team that the MLB and MLBPA had to force to spend more money as they were in violation of revenue sharing provisions.
Ken Rosenthal put it this way:
Many in the industry are skeptical of the Marlins’ sincerity, believing that the club will make offers that are competitive, but not good enough to accept — and that the players will sign with teams that have better chances to win.
To be fair the Marlins did increase their payroll by 10 million dollars last year, but have not spent more than 60 million dollars in payroll since 2005. Their highest paid player right now is SS Hanley Ramirez who will make 15 million dollars in 2012. It looks like they have around 44 million dollars committed for 2012 already.
While it is not how much money you spend, but how you spend it the Marlins are in desperate need to change their image within the larger baseball community and Miami itself. They are opening a new stadium next April and many will not pay for the increased cost of those tickets if things do not change. We shall see in the coming days how sincere they actually are.
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