Marlins outfielder Christian Yelich is — rather unsurprisingly — not particularly enthused with the direction the club has taken so far this winter, according to a report from Jerry Crasnick of EPN.com. That said, the 26-year-old has not demanded a trade and is willing to hear out president of baseball operations Michael Hill on the organization’s plans.
Yelich joins catcher J.T. Realmuto as veteran Marlins players who are evidently disappointed by the fact they are bound to an organization that has already dealt away three critical roster pieces this winter. While neither player enjoys no-trade protection, their views are hardly irrelevant for a new ownership group that has not exactly endeared itself to local fans since taking the helm a few months back.
Miami previously shipped out veterans Giancarlo Stanton, Marcell Ozuna, and Dee Gordon, each of whom was a key regular who came with contract rights beyond the 2018 season. Those deals relieved a significant portion of the team’s payroll pressure, though more paring is anticipated.
It was already fair to wonder whether and when Yelich, Realmuto, and others would be put on the block, but the question is now teed up publicly. At the same time, Hill issued a statement (which Crasnick tweets) saying “we will be the ones who initiate” any efforts to trade further veteran players.
Miami’s true plans are still a bit of a mystery. The organization has suggested it would like to attempt to build around some of its remaining established big leaguers, though it’s unclear as yet just how the team proposes to surround them with enough additional talent to create a contending roster in the near future. It’s certainly still possible the club is mostly just hoping to maintain its bargaining position by refusing to acknowledge that certain players are truly available.
Last we heard, multiple organizations were eyeing the talented Yelich. Along with Realmuto, he’s the most valuable trade asset in the organization, with enough outside interest that it seems the Marlins will enjoy a favorable bidding situation even if it’s made clear they are willing to make a move.
i don’t blame Yelich i wouldn’t wanna be there either
didn’t read the article lol. i would ask to be traded if i was in his shoes. either way good for him for speaking his mind.
Dude needs to chill out. He’s under contract. I wouldn’t call him a superstar or anything, I don’t think he’s got any leverage. By throwing a big fit he’s limiting his market to teams that are open to a lot of drama if something’s not going a player’s way
Yes, because the Marlins have of COURSE made it obvious that putting a competitive team on the field is a priority…
WHo said he is turning it into a big dea? Truth is, THIS is his everage
Does your L key not work?
THIS is his leverage???? Haha what??? THIS is the big deal he’s turning it into
Can’t blame him for wanting to be on a winning team.
Come on Jeets you could do better than this. Forget breaking even with $90 mill payroll. Let’s start banking some coin and get the payroll down to under $30 mill.
Yelich, Prado and Tazawa to Giants for a signed 2001 Barry Bonds used jocked strap. Savings of $27.5m
Realmuto, Chen and Ziegler to Dodgers for a signed 1988 used Kirk Gibson knee brace. Savings $32.5m
cardinals need to get rid of Fowler and get yelich
Fowler won’t be bad in a corner actually, his bat was pretty good last year. And Yelich’s acquisition cost relative to the upgrade he’d provide probably isn’t worth it imo.
I agree with this 100%. I thought the Fowler signing was questionable at the time, but I don’t think draining more of the farm for yelich is better then just keeping Fowler.
Fowler was only 4 point below his career avg.
How many games missed due to injury?
Sounds like the Titanic is about to sink! Women & Children First! Captain Jeter!
Titanic would seem to imply this was a potentially great team that’s become a tragedy. This isn’t a good team being gutted, it’s a barely ok team being sold off to start anew. My guess is they’re hoping to contend within 3-5 years.
I’d wait on judgement of Jeter to see if he’s playing the long game or just another Loria who doesn’t care about winning.
Losing Jose Fernandez doesn’t count as tragedy?
That doesn’t have anything to do with this conversation.
Sinking ships was brought up
You’re gonna bring up Fernandez like he was rude for forgetting to mention him…. c’mon man. Clearly wasn’t taking about someone dying, that’s a little more important than baseball and evidently clear from the original poster that he wasn’t referencing Fernandez in any way. Quit being a keyboard hero.
that’s pretty darn savage there, m80
This is horrible and I love it.
If Jeter doesn’t have the payroll to keep good players now, how will he be able to compete in the future? It’s not like attendance or ratings will be going up. Don’t see the TV deal suddenly becoming lucrative, when there is no one watching. Face it. The owners screwed any remaining fan base when they approved this sale.
I think he is taking an astros model of rebuild where they work on becoming profitable and stockpiling young guys before they even consider thinking about fielding a winning team. in that respect it may actually make sense to clear house for clubhouse culture if nothing else in order to really start from scratch.
Right on……the Marlins were a decent team and could have been a contender this year if they got a pitcher or two. Why didn’t the new ownership attempt to build the fan base and cultivate new markets? Instead, they sell off the assets and become even more despised than the prior owner.
And this is why the fan base isn’t in charge of baseball operations
Do you believe Stanton was the best thing for the Marlins? Sure he has the stats but he’s going to take up a considerable amount of their payroll soon. Something the Marlins would likely struggle with. Better off taking a couple of lean years and build through prospects and then spend money more wisely.
Wolf Chan is Jeter’s mom?
The Marlins are the Kansas City Athletics
Google: Kansas City Athletics Yankees
Loria didn’t care about winning? He guaranteed Wei-Yin Chen $80m why exactly? I’m sure he figured all that debt on the books would up the value of the team when it came time to sell.
Loria figured right because he made a fortune off the sale while banking the $60 million in revenue sharing every year. Loria cleared way over a billion in profit.
I agree as a curious, non-Marlins fan onlooker, but I have to imagine this is pretty painful for a fanbase that already had so little to cheer about. With so few fans to begin with, who on earth would go to see this team play? Is there irreparable harm done with a strategy like this? These are concerns that this ownership is dancing with right now. I just don’t understand why they seem to be so perplexed at the frustration they’re receiving.
If irreparable harm has been done then it has already occurred. Besides that, fanbases in EVERY market will always return to a winning team. I’m a Red Sox fan who really got annoyed with the most vocal Red Sox fans after 2004 when I realized a lot of these fans who claimed to be “life-long fans” couldn’t tell me what Bill Lee’s nickname was or why Bill Buckner should never have been blamed for the Sox losing the 86 Series or even who Ted Williams was.
My point is there will always be fair-weathered fans. If in 3-5 years the Marlins can contend then even the ones who are giving up on them today will swear on a stack of bibles that they have always been loyal Marlin fans and believed Jeter is a baseball god.
No one in MLB is perplexed. This is the third time this has been done.
How many more owners doing the same thing in Miami before you see this for what it is?
Google: Kansas City Athletics Yankees
That’s true, but on their best day Miami isn’t a baseball town. I think expansion misjudged the market and that Huizenga firesale after the 97 Series started the discontentment. Marlins remind me a bit of Arizona. Heavy retiree market, and those people keep their team loyalties if they don’t head back north during the baseball season. Heavy Latin market, but also one that’s more likely to tune games on tv.
Plenty of money flowing in there to field a playoff team. If the Cuban billionaire was allowed to buy the team everyone would still be there and he would have signed Darvish and Arrieta.
You can always rebuild if it doesn’t work.
Seven years from today there will be yet another sell off. This has always been the plan for the Miami market.
Who’s gonna grab Jeter’s gift baskets?!
They should of been disappointed with there under .500 performance
The guy that mows the grass has informed the team that he’s willing to waive his no trade clause to get out of town.
The beer men demand to go somewhere where’s there is people to sell beer to
So did the statue thing in centerfield, but nobody wanted to take it.
I’m surprised Bour hasn’t said anything. His relationship with Stanton was a very good one. He also has the only remaining power on the team. Sure Yelich has power but it’s not 30+ homeruns potential. Yelich & Realmuto have both expressed discontent with the team & while i would prefer to not trade them, we can get great prospects out of them because they are a) above average players and b) manageable for the upcoming years. With Yelich’s contract in particular, we can use his extremely cheap contract as a bargaining chip. We would definitely fall with in the top ten farm systems but would be last place in the MLB for the next 3 years.
Unfortunately Bour wouldn’t have tons of trade value because there are multiple left handed hitting firstbaseman still available and very few spots that need them. Bour is definitely one Fish that will probably stay in the net a bit longer.
Solid analogy
What are the Marlins going to do with 2B Sterling Castro that the recieved in the Stanton deal with the Yankees. Don’t hear anything about him.
Play him at short would be my guess Dietrich plays second
Castro at 2B, J.T. Riddle at SS, Dietrich in LF………….
Hopefully they trade Prado and Brian Anderson gets his shot at 3B.
Bour turns 30 in May….and he only has 366 games of experience (1100 AB’s, 64 HR’s). He’s an older “prospect” type, still has 3 Arbitration years (18,19,20)……so he could garner some interest…..somewhere. His age will be the biggest detriment to a trade.
The Long Island Ducks might take Starlin Castro if the Marlins keep the money.
This is the perfect place for a loser like Castro though if he plays out that dead contract.
Down for Reyes and O’Neil
No
Absolutely not
What’s the story with Sterling Castro that the Marlins recieved in the Stanton deal with the Yankees.
A lineup with yelich, bour, realmunto, prado, Castro isn’t half bad only if they had some pitching
I agree, but the reality is they don’t have pitching. Or a farm system. Their best option is to commit to a full rebuild. Trade remaining assets to build a farm and look for diamonds in the rough for a couple years while building up a new young core.
That’s one of the worst lineups in MLB.
Players just need to play and worry about things they can control. Worrying about outside influences will only effect their performance in a negative way and that will lead to deflating their value and no one wins in that scenario.
and that domino effect I mentioned on that article about their catcher demanding a trade is happening folks l. Yelich and bour deserve better than this
They deserve to chill out and focus on their on field performance given that they are under contract and not superstars
I think since they are rebuilding from the bottom up, they should trade them both and get as many prospects as they can. It will be better for both the Marlins and the players.
Hope he follows Dee Gordon to Seattle.
(yeah right)
Gamel, Lewis and then who? I wish the M’s could get him.
If they go up for trade The Rangers needs to sign them both. They have the money and means to. Plus we need a catcher and outfield depth. It’s win for both teams
Huh? You cant sign players for trade. You trade players to acquire players that available in trade. You sign players that are available in free agency.
Therefore the rangers will have to give up talent for either.
Shhh they just started following baseball yesterday.
Ranger fan
Dont blame him one bit.
No they traded one critical piece and 2 support players. Marcell won’t get half the rbi or home runs next season.
You can argue that Gordon wasn’t a key player, but Ozuna was worth 5-6 wins last year. I don’t know what you’re reasoning is for Ozuna to fall off next year, but you can’t argue that he wasn’t a big part of the Marlins last year that just about every team would kill to have play for them
Yelich for Grandal and Pederson?
and Alvarez, Verdugo, and a lower prospect.
Not close
Everyone is taking their talents out of South Beach!
lol
Touche’
If everyone is getting traded or released I would leave too. The Marlins will just be a last place AAA and almost retired players destination for a couple of years until what farm players they have get good then flipped to the highest bidder.
Realmuto and Yelich to the brewers for Brinson, Harrison, Diaz and Nottingham
Really bad optics from Michael Hill’s statement. There’s no reason to slap your players’ lack of leverage in a public statement. Is this organization tone deaf?
Where did Michael Hill state in his statement that the players lack leverage? Let me know.
Poor SOB. Has to play baseball for millions in Miami.
At some point, not every player can play for a winning team just because he doesn’t want to play for a losing team.
Tanking is a perfectly good strategy (and one used by new ownership in Houston just a few years ago) but I really question what MLB was doing here on the oversight front. Do you really want to have this happen to a team that was recently handed a taxpayer-funded stadium? And in Florida, a market you are struggling with anyway. I get the necessity of ridding yourself of Selig crony Loria, but were there no other reasonable offers, and why not demand better capitalization? I can understand that Jeter is going to be a lightening rod and perhaps these moves get greater scrutiny, but MLB should have done its best to see this team break away from the Loria legacy, not perpetuate it.
The Marlins have always been a AAAA farm team. Miami is just being looted by the MLB Mafia.
Google: Kansas City Athletics Yankees
why do you try to get ppl to Google absolute trash. loria was a terrible owner. thats on him. this new ownership is wanting to restart and make something more than a fringe wildcard team. im not even a Marlins fan. its not hard to see the reasoning here.
JETER = LORIA
This is the third “Loria” Miami has had as an owner. The goal by the MLB Mafia has always been the same, loot the Miami market and use the team to produce prime-time MLB stars for the playoff teams.
Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers (Cabrera and others), Cardinals.
AAAA farm team with 2 rings in a short history. You’re oversimplifying it. The Kansas City A’s existed in a time before the amateur draft and free agency. In fact, had Finley kept the A’s in KC….they were primed for that dynasty run with Catfish Hunter-reggie Jackson-Rollie Fingers.
The Jeter group took over an economic mess, and it needs dealt with. Loria was a horrific owner who needed to stick to selling art work. He tried to pump and dump that team and it didn’t really work. Whoever bought the Marlins was buying poison. No one with any decent business sense would just take that over and continue what Loria was accomplishing. I almost consider the Marlins an expansion team with debt at this point. They need to kick that economic ball way out in front of them.
There was no mess. Loria did exactly what he was allowed to do by the other MLB owners and Jeter was sold the team to continue running the Marlins the same way. The Cuban billionaire could not be trusted to do this. It is likely he would have refused to sell off and instead bought elite pitching and went for it.
You have some conspiracy theories and there’s no way to refute them because they are by nature difficult to bluntly disprove. I feel the Jeter group hasn’t even been given a chance. They really aren’t doing anything different than the Chicago Cubs or Houston Astros have done…tanking to rebuild. What excuse did Chicago have? Certainly no economic one. The fine line of failure is always going to be there in a smaller market. Oakland, KC…etc. There are always haves and have nots…perhaps now it’s have a lot and a little less…but same basic principle.
My question….why would it be wise to add Jake Arrieta given his price tag? That’s just throwing money. Perhaps wise baseball is equal to wise spending.
The Cubs, Astros, Phillies and Tigers had no team or farm system.
The Marlins had a complete prime-time lineup. That’s why you rebuild because you have no position talent. You can buy pitching, you can’t buy position talent. That’s why Harper and Machado are such an event. It’s been 18 years since A-Rod and Many Ramirez were free agents in the same winter.
The Marlins rebuild was all done. Buy some pitchers and win.
The Marlins exist solely to loot the Miami market, they will never sit atop the N.L. Least.
Except Houston still had better attendance even during three straight seasons of 100+ losses than the Marlins had in even a World Series win season.
The Astros fanbase was disgruntled, the Marlins fanbase is non-existent.
Seeing as though you’re providing nothing but inaccurate opinion, I’m going to have to disagree. But thanks for commenting
If the Marlins’ front office would have gotten out in front of this like they should have, this could have been handled behind closed doors weeks ago. Jeter & Co have handled the transition and subsequent transactions like bulls in a china shop. Communication with players only seems to happen when all else fails. I don’t know what Hill intends to discuss with Yelich tomorrow, but it would have to be a radical sales pitch that contradicts the actions of the new ownership group to even halfway convince Yelich that staying is a good thing. Regardless of what happens, Yelich isn’t the bad guy here. Marlins will get a haul of prospects for him whether he says he wants out or not.
I thought Yelich was the guy not getting paid to whine loudly in public. Maybe I misread his contract
Keep in mind that Hill stated publicly that he intended to ask Yelich if he wanted to stay or not. Hill opened the can of worms, Yelich is responding honestly.
If that is really the case, texting the words to Hill would have done the trick
And Hill could have easily done the same
Not much he can do really. If you think about it, you are employed by a MLB team and as a kid you dream of that. It’s a business. You are paid to play. The show goes on.
It’s like all the fans call for selling players and rebuilding, until it actually happens and then the owners are screwing the fans for not fielding a better team. There is no pleasing the crop of internet fans.
Read that right MICHAEL HILL president of baseball operations NOT DEREK JETER
Jeters CEO if I’m not mistaken
They should be stripped of revenue sharing until they submit a plan.
I in particular would love this. I’m tired of them pocketing our teams money annually
This __is__ the plan. MLB sold Jeter the team to do this. If they sold the Marlins to the Cuban billionaire Darvish and Arrieta would be completing their physicals in Miami and the Nats would be making moves to stay ahead of them.
What would the Yankees do? The Cardinals?
Google: Kansas City Athletics Yankees
Sounds about right.
Again…not same thing. Stanton controlled his destination…and only a select few high end teams could take on his contract. The KC A’s never had a player like that on the roster. I’m in the KC market and have done research papers on it…my family goes way back with that organization. In fact the mechanisms in place are the ones the Marlins will use to rebuild…the amateur draft and free agency. It’s nowhere close to the same game as it was in 1960….not even the same game it was in 2000
Baez or Happ, A.A., Caratini, pic two minor eague pitchers and see i the Marins bite. Now, i I can ind out what is wrong with my eyboard…
Glad I just brought the entire U-Haul franchise in South Florida! I going to be Rich!!
The sad thing is if Hernandez didn’t pass away and if the fish got a little more good solid pitching to put behind them they actually could have been a legit threat in the NL
Fernandez I ment
I think the Astros should help them on the way to following their lead-
Tucker/Reed/Paulino/Fisher/Kemp
For
Yelich/Realmuto/Chen and his contract (maybe can salvage him as a bullpen lefty)
The sad thing is the mlb allowed this management group to buy in. It reminds me of the McCourt days. Actually it a good parallel in terms of botching the recent drafts, int signings, and no farm to supplement the roster. Management is selling everything of value, because they can’t afford short term interest payments. The optics would have looked better if the mlb just allowed Loria to completely firesale it at the deadline. That honestly looked like the course they were heading towards anyways.
So you want the same thing to happen but you want Jeter to come out looking good?
You want to be able to hang everything on the fat old man who is no longer around and Jeter and MLB get to look like victims?
Google: Criminal Mind
Did you get a BA in Google searches or something? Do you work for google? Do they pay you for plugs?
Wish M’s traded for him instead of a second baseman…
M.Moniak,J.Alfaro,A.Medina,D.Cozens,T.Eshelman,D.Anderson for Yelich,Realmuto
Sixto Sanchez, Nick Williams, Altherr
Why again is Jeter being criticized for doing the same exact thing that every commenters here team did when a new ownership took over?
I hope Yelich tells Jeter and Co. that he has no interest in playing for an organization that insists on being a bottom five payroll and that will ship everyone with talent away rather than spend some money and be competitive. Yelich should tell them that he will not sign an extension to his current contract and that if the team doesn’t trade him in the next few years he will walk after becoming a free agent.
Come to STL