The Marlins are embarrassing all of baseball

[TMC]

http://www.bloggerstobenamedlater.com/2013/04/16/the-marlins-are-embarassing-all-of-baseball/

There have been a million accounts of why the Marlins are a laughing
stock. Their scumbag owner Jeffrey Loria is infamous for swindling
taxpayers and fans—from the crooked circumstances around how he
ditched the Expos to acquire the Marlins to just last offseason, when
he unexpectedly traded away the bulk of the team’s recognizable
players (and their salaries). Their new stadium is surrounded by
questions and controversy about how it was financed, and their lineup
is filled with washed-up has-beens (Placido Polanco is batting clean-
up) and no-name rookies,* all of them wearing the atrocious orange
pajama-uniforms the Marlins unveiled last season.

The excitement surrounding a new-look 2012 team filled with expensive
free agents and a much-ballyhooed manager crashed and burned before
the season even started, with manager Ozzie Guillen proclaiming his
admiration for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in a city filled with
people who fled Cuba to escape him. Their attendance is abysmal, and
it’s not going to get better.

But even if you set all of this background aside, all you have to do
to know that the Marlins are bad for baseball is turn on a game. I was
in Philadelphia this weekend with family, and as we always do, we had
Phillies games on whenever they were playing. As much as we like
baseball, it was downright uncomfortable watching them play in a
practically empty stadium in Miami (especially since most of the few
fans who were there were cheering for the Phillies). The series had as
much excitement as a World Baseball Classic qualifying game between
Kerplakistan and New Biminy at 4:00 in the morning.


The saddest thing of all was when the few scattered fans in that
enormous, weird stadium tried to do the wave and couldn’t because they
didn’t have the critical mass.

An article on Business Insider, The Miami Marlins’ Attendance Problem
Is Even Worse Than They Are Willing To Admit, outlines the Marlins’
attendance issues. Season tickets sales are down from 12,000 to 5,000
this season, and many ticket holders are staying home. The Marlins are
attempting to put butts in seats by giving tickets away. According to
this article on the Fishstripes blog, people over the age of 55 can go
to games for free on Thursdays (of note because people over 55 make up
100 percent of the demographic in Florida).

By comparison, the Colorado Rockies, who came into the league at the
same time as the Marlins, are celebrating their 20th anniversary with
a series of giveaways and fan events. They have never won a World
Series game, let alone the two titles the Marlins have won (though
they have lost four World Series games, in the course of getting swept
by the Red Sox in 2007). But they play regularly in front of crowds of
more than 30,000 and have a credible fan base. There are players whom
you think of and immediately identify as Rockies, from Andres
Galarraga to Todd Helton.

The Rockies may not be the greatest team ever, and their owners are
not exactly beloved in Colorado, but they are firmly established after
two decades in the league, and their problems feel like the problems
normal teams have—shaky middle relief, injured position players, and
how to keep routine pop-ups from floating through the thin Rocky
Mountain air into a low orbit around the planet. (Okay, some of their
problems are unique.)

The Marlins have become some sort of surreal joke. The bizarre art
deco sculpture beyond their centerfield wall, which will flash and
spurt and spin if the Marlins ever hit a home run at home this season
(still hasn’t happened!), is a symbol of what the Marlins have become.
It’s brightly colored and awkward to watch, and no one quite
understands why it’s there. Also, it cost more to build than the
salaries for 22 of the 25 players on the Marlins’ roster this season.

The biggest problem for Major League Baseball is that the bad baseball
experience in Miami is infecting the rest of the league. When avid
baseball fans like me choose not to watch their team play because
they’re playing a terrible team in a depressing environment, Marlins
owner Jeffrey Loria is killing more than just one franchise. He’s
killing Major League Baseball’s reputation as a legitimate league.
Just as baseball stepped in and removed Dodgers owner Frank McCourt
(much to the relief of baseball fans in LA**), it’s time for
commissioner Bud Selig to sack up and do something about the situation
in Miami, either by removing the owner or removing the team.

Finally, while we’re on the subject of the Marlins, let’s update the
BTBNL Awful-O-Meter, which will track the two lowest payrolls in
baseball all season long. Looks like the Marlins have increased their
early lead over the Astros.

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*The one player on the Marlins roster the world is going to know soon
enough is a young Cuban pitcher named Jose Fernandez. That dude is a
fireballing stud, and the Marlins will trade him as soon as he’s due
for a new contract.

**Yes, I know, “baseball fans in LA” is an oxymoron.