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Would Royals Fans Trade Franchises with the Miami Marlins?

Sure the Miami Marlins are the laughingstock of baseball right now. But we've been the laughingstock of baseball for decades. Would you trade places with them?

By Max Rieper
Steve Mitchell-US PRESSWIRE

The Miami Marlins are liquidating assets faster than a used-carpet store going out of business. It shouldn't be all that surprising considering they performed a similar fire-sale following high-spending championships seasons in 1997 and 2003. Because of this, Jeffrey Loria has been castigated as one of the worst owners in all of sports, a man motivated by pure greed and disdain for the common fan.

Jeffrey Loria took control of the Marlins before the 2002 season after agreeing to let MLB control his club, the Montreal Expos. In the eleven seasons since, the Marlins have had:

  • Five winning seasons
  • Four seasons where they were within 7 games of first place in the month of September (this does not include their championship season where they were well back of first place, but still won the Wild Card)
  • Three 90-loss seasons
  • No 100-loss seasons
In those same eleven seasons, the Royals have had:
  • One winning season
  • One season where they were within 7 games of first place going in the month of September
  • Nine 90-loss seasons
  • Four 100-loss seasons
Here are the team payrolls, year-by-year

Year

Kansas City Royals

Miami Marlins

2002

$47,257,000

$41,917,917

2003

$40,518,000

$49,050,000

2004

$47,609,000

$42,118,042

2005

$36,881,000

$60,375,961

2006

$47,294,000

$14,998,500

2007

$67,116,500

$30,507,000

2008

$58,245,500

$21,811,500

2009

$70,908,333

$36,814,000

2010

$72,267,710

$55,641,500

2011

$36,126,400

$56,944,000

2012

$60,916,225

$118,078,000

Total

$585,139,668

$528,256,420

Average

$53,194,515

$48,023,310

Source: http://www.stevetheump.com/Payrolls.htm

A few caveats:

  • The 2012 Marlins payroll skews their totals a bit. If you take that out, their average payroll over the last decade was a little more than $41 million.
  • The Marlins play in a much larger media market than Kansas City. The Miami metropolitan area has about 5.6 million people (8th largest MSA in the United States). Kansas City has about 2 million people (29th largest MSA)
  • The Marlins just got a brand-spanking new stadium (complete with awesomely awful home run display!), while the Royals renovated an existing stadium.
So the Marlins seem to have an owner than spends even less than ours (with perhaps larger spikes of spending) but management that yields greater results with fewer resources (although does playing in the National League make it easier to compete?)

I ask you as a Royals fan, would you trade franchises/ownership/management with the Miami Marlins right now? We both have pretty cheap owners. Their management gets better results. Our farm system is probably better. Our ownership is not likely to have as dramatic of a fire-sale. On the other hand, the Marlins are getting compensation for their players rather than letting them leave via free agency.

Who has it worse?

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