Bruce Sherman fantasizes of Marlins contending without paying for good players

The contrast is staggering. Over the last two offseasons combined, the Miami Marlins have spent a total of $8.5 million on major league free agent deals. Meanwhile, Juan Soto's contract with the New York Mets guarantees him approximately that same amount during every regular season month (March/April through September) from now through the end of the 2030s. The Mets have also signed nine other free agents to deals exceeding $8.5 million during that span, including relievers and less-than-full-time position players, because that is how the market values them as MLB revenue continues to rise.

"Everybody wants you to sign every free agent that's available," Marlins chairman & principal owner Bruce Sherman joked during Monday's press conference. "We understand that."

Sherman's responses throughout the presser made it clear that he does not actually understand why there's widespread concern about the direction of the Marlins franchise under his stewardship.

It's crucial for top decision-makers to be aligned on their values. To Sherman's credit, he and president of baseball operations Peter Bendix have that going for them. "Player development continues at all levels for every single player in this organization," Bendix said on Monday, with Sherman nodding by his side. "We are about getting them better, no matter where they are in their career. Everything that we're going to be doing is for that purpose."

Sherman boasted about assembling one of the largest front-office staffs in baseball. While that may have been an exaggeration, it is meaningfully larger and more organized than it had been prior to Bendix's arrival. There are now 11 different directors within the player development department that each have their own niche.

But what happens if/when players become the best versions of themselves in the majors? They will get traded to other teams in exchange for prospects. That is what Sherman's track record has been throughout his seven-plus years of ownership and all indications are that this cycle will continue.

The last player to receive a contract extension from the Marlins was middle reliever Richard Bleier in March 2022. The only Sherman-era player to receive an extension guaranteeing more than two years has been Sandy Alcantara, a deal that aged very well for Miami even with Alcantara missing an entire season due to injury. 

Alcantara's extension was backloaded. His salary is spiking from $9.3 million in 2024 to $17.3 million in 2025. That is still far less than the former NL Cy Young award winner would make on the open market, but it's more than Sherman has ever paid an active Marlins player for a single season. When asked on Monday whether he could make a commitment to keeping Alcantara throughout this season, Sherman said he would defer to the front office.

Alcantara's salary alone does not make a trade inevitable—it's the combination of his salary and the hopeless supporting cast that he's been surrounded by. Waiting until he's nearing the end of his contract would diminish what the Marlins could get in return, and there's no reason to wait when the 2025 team is so ill-equipped to contend.

"I think we're gonna win a lot of games, a lot more games than you think we're gonna win this year," Sherman predicted. He cited improvements to the Marlins' defense and baserunning as well as the influence of new manager Clayton McCullough, who's coming off a World Series title as first base coach of the Los Angeles Dodgers. "(McCullough) gave the most inspiring speech I've seen in all my years as an owner of this club," Sherman claimed.

Sherman is blindly rooting for individual breakout performances because that's all you can do when you don't pay for reliable veterans. Alcantara is the only current Marlins player who has previously posted at least 2.3 fWAR in a season. For context, the Marlins have traded away Luis Arraez, Jesús Luzardo and Jazz Chisholm Jr. within the past year, all of whom have cleared that mark and would've still been under club control for 2025 if retained.

Veterans can also provide intangible value by helping younger guys get acclimated to the MLB lifestyle. Even if Bendix's player development processes are brilliantly executed, top prospects are at a greater risk of underachieving in the majors in the absence of those leadership figures. Sherman awkwardly tried turning this roster deficiency into a brag: "We have two players [Cal Quantrill and Anthony Bender] who are 30 years old—and they both turned 30—on the 40-man roster. I'm excited about that."

As Aram Leighton of Just Baseball recently detailed, the Marlins farm system is deep with potential big league contributors. Few of them realistically profile as above-average regulars, though.

To this point, Alcantara has been an outlier—he blossomed into a star and found common ground with the Marlins on a contract that covered most of his prime years. What happens if other talents like that emerge? Either Sherman will need to convince them to accept similarly team-friendly deals, or he'll have to spend outside his comfort zone to keep pace with his fellow MLB owners.

Marlins fans are not insisting that Sherman "sign every free agent." Operating like the Mets or the Dodgers is too inefficient to work in this market. They just want to see more of the club's revenue-sharing proceeds reinvested into the payroll so that this latest rebuilding opportunity doesn't go to waste.