As a fan of the MLB I am pissed off about the Miami Marlins hiring of General Manager Dan Jennings to be their on field manager as well. I hate the move because it forces me, not a fan of the Marlins whatsoever to pay more for to watch my team play baseball.
Why is that you ask? Revenue sharing is why.
The rest of the MLB and its fans now are paying former manager Ozzie Guillen for the final year of his four year deal to the tune of about $2.5 million dollars this year, former General Manager Larry Beinfest and Special Assistant Jim Fleming (financials unknown), and will now be paying former Manager Mike Redmond through the 2017 season as well (financials unknown). Hell, the Marlins just extended Redmond back in September of 2014 after his club finished 15 games better than they did in his first year as manager.
The Marlins aren’t financially solvent without the help of the MLB’s revenue sharing. Each team pays 31% of their local revenue to the MLB in profit sharing and then the total pot is redistributed to each club in equal shares. This means the smaller revenue clubs end up getting back more than the send out. This benefits the small market teams allowing them to make money just like the big clubs without having to spend literally nothing on payroll to make ends meet. The Marlins have been one of the biggest beneficiaries of this system since its inception.
According to the calculations done by Forbes in March 2015, the Marlins still were able to turn a $15.4 million dollar profit despite having just payroll expenses alone of $72 million while they only brought in at the gate $32 million. Their TV deal wasn’t worth over $55 million dollars in one season, that’s for damn sure.
Getting to my point about you and me, who aren’t Marlins fans having to pay more for our baseball. Each ownership group has a bottom line profit they must turn each year. They all have to chip into revenue sharing, that’s just part of the deal when you own a baseball team. Because Jeffery Loria can turn a profit almost no matter what he does with his squad, he has no reason to be accountable with his actions. He gets to live fat and happy, without risking any of his own money.
Loria can just sit back and make crazy personnel decisions without repercussion because you and I, the fans of the other MLB franchises, will have our hard earned money shipped off to crazy town, because that is just how it’s set up. The ownership groups in our towns still have to make their bottom line, which means they will have to charge us more to watch our teams play to make up for the drunken sailor management by the Marlins.
If I were the other 29 ownership groups, I would be digging through all the MLB ownership bylaws trying to find a way to make this lunatic sell his franchise. He is making a disgrace out of a franchise that has two championships in its relatively young existence.
Now that the buffoon in Miami has appointed a manager who’s last coaching gig came at the High School level 30 years ago, the Marlins will get worse and worse. Fans will continue to not show up and not buy their gear. The Marlins own revenue will continue to fall, meaning they will get a bigger share of the MLB’s collective pot, all the while the Marlins will still turn a profit for Jeffery Loria.
It makes me sick that either the Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred either doesn’t have the power to take over the Marlins to stop the madness. It would be in the best interest of the game to remove Loria from power, but it may not be in the best financial interest of the game to do so.
Unfortunately, the number on interest of any modern day commissioner of a sports league is dollars and cents, not the grandness of the game.
There won’t be change coming around the corner and this cycle of mismanagement will continue in South Florida until somebody who loves baseball way to much to watch this travesty continue overpays by double to pry the Marlins away from Loria. Unfortunately, anyone with that much money knows the Marlins are a bad investment and won’t spend the kind of capital required to make Loria sell.
So the vicious cycle will continue.