The departure of Derek Jeter from the Marlins might have felt abrupt, but it seems unrest had been percolating in Miami for a little while.
Jeter stepped down Monday as CEO of the Marlins, and the timing of it all was fascinating. It came on the day of the owner-imposed deadline (which has since been moved) for an agreement to be reached to end the lockout. Then emerged the reports that the Marlins, who seemed to have some irons in the free agency fire up until the shutdown started, weren’t going to grow payroll much once free agency resumed.
While it’s plausible that the Marlins’ stance on how much they were willing to spend in free agency ultimately could have been the final straw for Jeter, ESPN MLB insider Buster Olney suggested that things had been trending in the wrong direction for some time.
“I heard a year ago that there were issues between (co-owner) Bruce Sherman and Derek and that was beginning to turn,” Olney said on Tuesday’s episode of the “Baseball Tonight with Buster Olney” podcast. “Derek, he’s certainly someone who when he was a player wanted to be an owner. I think he’ll stay in baseball one form or another. I think this experience was a challenge for him, like running the team didn’t necessarily go so great.
“He takes over the Marlins, they have a team that’s right on the cusp of being a playoff contender. This great lineup, he trades (Christian) Yelich, he trades (Giancarlo) Stanton, he trades (J.T.) Realmuto, he tanks for a couple seasons. He gets the payroll down, they start to develop the team, and through that time – and the pandemic is in the middle of it – the interest in the team doesn’t really grow in Miami. That’s always the challenge, and that didn’t change.”
From there, Olney painted a theory on what he believes was the nail in the coffin.
“I think what happened was Bruce Sherman throws a lot of money into buying the Marlins, the perception in the industry was that he bought a white elephant and it’s not a good investment for him and he’s getting frustrated with that. So he and Derek start butting heads and then they have this issue of whether or not to grow the payroll, and that’s the moment that Derek leaves.”
Where the Marlins go from here isn’t entirely clear, especially because of the lockout. Either way, Miami might be in a precarious spot and Jeter, having been there since Fall 2017, didn’t seem keen on sticking around to see if things would get better or worse.
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