TUESDAY: The Marlins have officially announced the signing.
MONDAY 10:22am: Jones will earn $7.75MM over the life of his contract, tweets Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald. He will be paid $2.75MM in 2014 and $5MM in 2015.
8:39am: The Marlins have finalized their rumored two-year, $7.5MM deal with Garrett Jones, and an announcement is expected to be made today, reports MLB.com's Joe Frisaro. Jones is represented by Relativity Baseball (formerly SFX Baseball).
The 32-year-old Jones owns a career .254/.316/.458 slash line across six big league seasons. The first baseman/outfielder had a down year in 2013, however, hitting .233/.289/.419 in 440 plate appearances. Jones is best suited to be a platoon first baseman, as his career .193/.234/.334 line versus lefties shows a glaring weakness against same-handed pitching. His numbers against right-handed pitching — .271/.337/.489 — are a marked improvement.
The decision to bring in Jones on a two-year deal would seem to indicate the end of Logan Morrison's time with the Marlins. Miami is reportedly intent on shopping him at this week's Winter Meetings, apparently hoping that they can fill their third base hole by moving LoMo to a new team. Morrison has clashed with the Marlins before and currently has a grievance pending as a result of a demotion to the minors during the 2011 season that Morrison feels was not due to his on-field performance.
