3 reasons Miami Marlins won’t sign Manny Machado

Next year’s free agent market is terrible

Well, terrible in terms of the number of targets worth pursuing anyway. There will be a certain two-way player, once in a generation talent on the market.

Ultimately though, when it comes to offensive upgrades, it will all be about the fates of Shohei Ohtani and Manny Machado. That’s it. End of list.

And that’s assuming one of them doesn’t simply sign an extension. Unlikely, but not impossible.

At any rate, that is going to be a lot of competition for those services. Competition with teams with far deeper pockets. Including the Padres themselves, by the way. It’s not as if there are multiple reports out there saying Machado actually is unhappy. He just wants more money.

Bottom-line, it’s not a booming free agent market. Nothing like fans have seen the past couple offseasons. The Marlins will have to outspend other clubs to land him. Even if they dramatically surpass expectations this year and can market themselves as winning team, that is going to be a tall order.

If there were going to be multiple elite hitters, particularly multiple elite hitters that all play third base, then it would be easier to see a scenario in which the Marlins could pull this off. Leveraging the market, waiting for other teams to blow out their budgets. No such luck here.

If nothing else, every team that tried and failed to sign Carlos Correa this offseason should be expected as being in on Machado. Them, and the Angels and Padres. Miami could possibly outspend one of them. They won’t outspend all of them.

Especially since they will hopefully be out of money, since…