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| Coming To A 100-Plus-Year-Old Ballpark Near You? |
If you listen to the words of Marlins President
David Samson,
you might think they'll be building a Giancarlo Stanton statue outside their gaudy Miami stadium any day now. Said Samson,
“He’s on this team [in 2015] either way. I can’t wait until after the season to sit down with Giancarlo and [agent] Joel Wolfe and talk about contract. We’re ready. We want him to be a Marlin well past his arbitration years. We hope that he believes in us and believes in Miami and believes in the direction of this team and recognizes that he has a chance to be the leader of a successful team for many years to come." Wait, didn't The 2014 Fish just escape the NL East
cellar for the first time since 2010? Let's see, did they make the playoffs? No. Did they draw appreciably more fans? No (1.7 million, fourth lowest in MLB). Do they generally stink less? A
little (maybe). So, why should Stanton stick around? Maybe it's the uniform color scheme or the exploding 'art deco' thingy in center field. The bottom line is you need to take everything Samson says with a
huge grain of South Beach sea salt. After all, the total Marlins payroll this year was $45.8 million—that's
$110.5 million less than the $156.3 million the last-place Red Sox spent. And what are they doing financially to convince Stanton that they're a
real franchise? They're upping that payroll to a whopping $60 million next year! Ooooooh, that should impress him.
