How Far Away Are Miami Marlins? One Year, With Right Lawyers

The Miami Marlins are one year away from contention…if three legal victories go their way this year.

The Miami Marlins have a deep farm system, and just had a winning season. Rebuild over, right?

Wrong, although there is definitely light at the end of the tunnel.

Last year’s club flashed all kinds of potential, and in an expanded format, even made the playoffs. More impressive still, they swept a Chicago Cubs team that would have made the playoffs with or without that expanded field in the first round before falling to the Atlanta Braves in the NLDS. However, the NL East is even more loaded this season, and the playoff field has shrunk back to five. As a result, 2021 contention is not seriously expected from Miami. Continued growth and progress definitely are though, and if that takes place, Miami could be one big signing away from making a real run at their first division crown.

Just so long as the Miami Marlins lawyers do their job this year.

Well, to be fair, some of those lawyers will probably represent more organizations than just Miami. But the case can definitely be made that the most impactful battles for the Marlins 2022 season will take place in the courtroom, not on the diamond.

It all comes down to what results from their new television contract, the future of MLB revenue sharing, and whether negotiations go smoothly over the new CBA.

For starters, the Miami Marlins are hoping to at least double their television revenues with this new deal. Majority owner Bruce Sherman went further a few backs back, saying failing to exceed double would be a disappointment. As linked above, all reports are that a deal is in place, but no specifics have been released yet. Which, to be honest, is a little concerning. The ramifications of Miami’s laughably small revenue stream from their deal with the Network Formerly Known as Fox Sports (I’ll call it Bally’s when they announce a broadcast schedule) is well known to all Marlins fans. That’s something the team would want fans to know…unless the league wide fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic forced the Marlins to take below market value once again.

Fingers crossed that announcement, along with an extension for Brian Anderson, is coming in time for Opening Day. Increasing television money going forward is a must for Miami, and falling short of that double or better goal likely pushes Miami’s rebuild back a year to 2023. It’s that important.

Secondly, let’s talk revenue sharing. Part of the MLB landscape since 1996, it originated as a solution to baseball’s perceived competitive advantage problem. Basically, a fix for the Yankees-A’s scene in the beginning of Moneyball. Unfortunately, the new problem in baseball is that many MLB teams have found new solutions to the revenue disparity between the Dodgers and Rays of the world:

Tanking. Service time manipulation. Or in a business strategy pulled right out of The Producers, teams unabashedly acting upon the knowledge that if you play your cards right, you can make more money with a flop than a hit.

All of these have called the very survival of the revenue sharing plan into question. Without question, many owners have lined their pockets with revenue sharing money over the years. The Miami Marlins have been no exception, and were in fact seen as the rule during much of the Loria years. The problem is that some of this money really does help pay for the payroll of small market teams like Miami. And it would be the most Miami Marlins thing of all to lose those revenue sharing dollars the moment they get a new revenue source.

The closer to push Miami’s outside revenue ends up being, the farther they are going to be from starting to perennially competing.

Lastly, the CBA itself. In many ways, that’s too far away to make any realistic projections about. A fact that is stopping precisely no one in or around the game from doing so. You can throw a dart and find a sportswriter confident that we are heading for a work stoppage of some kind in 2022. The battles over how to proceed with the 2020 and 2021 campaigns, Covid wise, only served to show just how polarized the two camps of labor and ownership are on a multiplicity of issues.

At the end of the day, there’s no way the Miami Marlins are doling out big contracts if they think they are looking at a third consecutive season of depressed sales. And make no mistake, between whatever games are lost due to a stoppage and fan disgust over this kind of bickering, teams are going to feel it at the gate if MLB and the MLBPA decide to turn the clock back to 1994.

Hopefully, a year from now Miami Marlins fans will be drooling over the free agent reinforcements added to their formidable young roster. They’re a year away from winning big on the field- just so long as they win big off of it in the next few months.