Why don’t the Miami Marlins have any retired numbers?

Only one team in MLB hasn’t retired the number of a single player to wear its uniform: the Miami Marlins. What gives?

Six players in the MLB Hall of Fame have worn a Miami Marlins jersey.

That might sound impressive at first glance … except one of them never actually played for the Marlins, just served as interim manager. And two of them only wore that jersey in the last seasons of their professional career. And one of them wore it for less than a week. And five of the six failed to spend more than one season in Miami. And the only one who spent more time than that in the jersey didn’t even wear it for one season’s worth of games.

With all that being the case, it might not be much of a surprise that no player in Cooperstown is went in sporting a Marlins cap. The longest relationship any player in there has had with the franchise is four years, and that’s if you get cute and count present co-owner Derek Jeter.

However, what might astound anyone reading this is that the Miami Marlins are the only team in MLB to have never retired a single number of anyone who has played for them.

That’s right. The only number currently retired by the Marlins organization is the same number that every team in baseball has retired: No. 42. This despite the fact that this is an organization that has won two World Series, and had multiple locally raised players help win them. Despite the fact this is an organization with six no-hitters, a slew of Gold Glove winners, and seen plenty of MVP caliber seasons.

So, what gives?

The Miami Marlins Have Made Many, Many Trades

Let’s start with the obvious: no one has honestly spent enough of their career to immediately warrant the Miami Marlins making such a move.

Miguel Cabrera was a generational talent, one of the best anyone reading this has actually seen play the game of baseball. Ivan Rodriguez was one of the best to ever play his position. Giancarlo Stanton keeps slowly but surely racking up the appropriate counting stats. However, Cabrera and Stanton were traded away in cost-cutting deals, and Rodriguez wasn’t afforded the chance to finish his career here.

And those are just the clear favorites for Cooperstown. Retiring a number doesn’t necessarily take a Hall of Fame induction, even though some teams do set that as the bar. There are six Miami Marlins players who tend to routinely come up in such conversations. The list would be far greater if any of the organization’s All-Star caliber players to have a long career actually spent the majority of their careers in South Florida.

Again though, that’s the obvious answer. The obvious answer that still does more to answer why Marlins fans shouldn’t expect a Hall of Famer anytime soon than address why there aren’t any numbers retired at Marlins Park.

As to that, three other reasons stand out as the main culprits, starting with…

Jeff Conine wore two different numbers for the Marlins

If anyone was going to have their number retired by the Miami Marlins, you’d think the player called Mr. Marlin would have had a better shot than most.

Jeff Conine won two World Series with the Marlins, playing with the team from 1993-1997 and 2003-2005. You’ll find him in the top 5 on almost every major statistical category on the organization’s career leaderboards, most notably coming in second for games played and third in hits. Eight years, all impactful. He might not have been the most talented to ever wear a Marlins jersey, but you’d struggle to find one that was more dedicated to the success of the team.

However, a bigger issue here than the lack of an elite resume might just be the fact that he wore two different numbers during his time in Miami.

The first time around, he wore No. 19. Upon his return though, another player was already wearing the number, and it was one of the best players on the team: Mike Lowell. That complicates matters even more since Lowell’s name is another that often comes up in these number retirement conversations.

Bizarrely enough, the only Marlins player that even holds a candle to Conine’s team-first mentality is current team captain Miguel Rojas, who has worn No. 19 since 2015, longer than either Conine or Lowell ever did.

Bottom-line, if Conine had a different favorite number, the Marlins probably would have retired it by now. And if Miguel Rojas gets himself a ring during his career here, don’t sleep on a blanket retirement of No. 19 at some point either.

Granted, titles aren’t everything, because there’s another number that came very close to being retired…

The Marlins have had four different owners

A big part of a jersey number being retired comes down to relationship with the owner … and the Marlins have had a great many owners.

Four to be precise, and four owners in less than 30 years of existence. That’s not much time for forming deep bonds. Two of the handoffs happened either just after or right before major rebuilds, and the group that held the team the longest conducted two rebuilds during their tenure. So Marlins owners weren’t exactly tripping over inherited legends when they took over, and if they were present, were usually more interested in team building with what they could get in exchange for said legend rather than with them as a centerpiece.

What’s more, these owners have often wanted to distinguish themselves from what came before, rather than play up their connection to it. This has been particularly true in the case of the split between the Jeffrey Loria and Bruce Sherman/Jeter regimes, who seem to actually and actively despise each other.

If Loria still owned the team, there’s a very good chance he would have retired Fernandez’s number anyway. There was a real relationship there, between Loria and Fernandez. The Sherman/Jeter group was able to move in and just see the black and white PR ramifications covered on the previous slide. Statue plans were scrapped, as was any other aspect of the stadium or organization that remotely smacked of Loria. They fired Mr. Marlin himself from his team ambassador/adviser role, along with Jack McKeon and other ex-Marlins in emeritus positions.

Each of those decisions on its own can be defended, at least in a cold business calculus sense. Taken all together though, it’s no real surprise that Miami Marlins fans are still waiting on jersey retirements for Conine, Lowell, Luis Castillo, and others because it really looks like this current ownership regime is going to wait to honor players that played for them.

If that is indeed the case then, only one thing seems certain right now: Marlins fans shouldn’t expect that lack of retired numbers to change anytime soon.