Nightengale: Marlins buy credibility with Stanton deal
It's like waking up to the shrill of that alarm clock, groggily getting out of bed, and being jolted to your senses when you see your next-door-neighbors pulling up in a new Bentley.
Yes, the same neighbors who recently had a foreclosure notice on their home, whose idea of fine dining is the local burger joint, and who snubbed the troop selling Girl Scout cookies.
The Miami Marlins, whose name had become synonymous with fire sales, with the smallest payroll in baseball, suddenly are going gaudy South Beach on us.
The Marlins signed All-Star outfielder Giancarlo Stanton to a record 13-year, $325 million contract Monday and have scheduled a news conference Wednesday.
"A landmark day,'' Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria told the Miami Herald. "It means everything to the franchise. We have a face of the franchise for the next 13 years.''
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Not only will it be the richest contract in baseball history, eclipsing Alex Rodriguez's 10-year, $275 million deal, but the richest by any athlete in North American sports history.
Yes, and just two years after this same franchise infuriated the baseball world when they unloaded their highest-paid players in a fire sale, they have locked up the National League's biggest and brightest star.
"We call him a no-food player,'' Marlins president David Samson recently told USA TODAY Sports. "A no-bathroom player. When he comes to the plate, nobody leaves their seat.''
Go ahead and criticize the mega-contract all you want, but Stanton will prove to be worth every penny considering today's landscape.
Come on, would you rather see your favorite players overpaid, or your local owners overpaid?
There's so much money in the game that the nearly $9 billion in revenue have got to go somewhere, and the last we checked, there were more fans cheering Stanton in the batter's box than seeing Loria in the owner's box.
Suddenly, with the stroke of an autograph on a contract, all is forgiven.
The cheapness.
The fire sales.
Even the broken promises.
Sure, the Marlins have yet to contend since the blockbuster in November 2012 that sent shortstop Jose Reyes and starters Mark Buehrle to Toronto just 11 months after signing them.
But you know what?
The Blue Jays haven't won a thing either, only paying more for their losses.
Really, the deal turned out to be a stroke of scouting ingenuity, with general manager Dan Jennings and president Mike Hill insisting that shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria, starting pitcher Henderson Alvarez and prized pitching prospect Justin Nicolino be included in the deal.
The only collateral damage done was to the Marlins' credibility.
Well, that image will be immediately restored this week with the first installment of their $325 million expenditure.
And this deal could turn out to be ingenious, particularly considering Stanton just celebrated his 25th birthday. He'll be just 37 by the time his contract expires.
Stanton and Mike Trout are the finest young players in all of baseball, and as an owner, you need to do everything possible to keep them around.
The Los Angeles Angels did just that in April when they signed Trout to a six-year, $144.5 million extension, making sure they're hanging onto him throughout his prime.
The Marlins, who spent a major-league low $52.3 million on their 40-man roster this year, are doing the same with Stanton. Once the breakdown of his contract is revealed, he likely won't be receiving a whole lot more than Trout for the first six years of the deal.
The difference is that Stanton, the ninth player in history to receive a contract worth at least $200 million, will hold all of the cards. He will have a full no-trade provision, and also an opt-out clause, permitting him to leave if he believes he's being underpaid, or if the Marlins don't live up to their promise by building a competitive team around him.
Simply, Stanton says, there's no amount of money that will keep him in Miami if he feels like he's nothing more than a one-man circus who's being used to sell tickets.
"This is a business,'' Stanton told USA TODAY Sports in September,"but at the same time, you have to have fun and be successful. Otherwise, it's just a job.
"Once it's a job, it's not as fun anymore.''
And nothing will be more fun, Stanton says, than hanging out in South Beach with one of those World Series rings on his hand.
"Winning,'' Stanton says, "cures most things.''
Considering he'll now have the money to take care of the next few generations of Stantons, winning may actually take care of everything.
There's no reason why the Marlins won't contend in the NL East in 2015, and playing in deep October in in 2016, believing that those bi-monthly checks sent to Stanton's bank account are the best investment made in South Florida since sunscreen.
It's no different north of the border where the Toronto Blue Jays signed free-agent catcher Russell Martin to a five-year, $82 million contract. Sure, they overpaid. No one believed Martin was worth more than a four-year contract. Yet, there was no price on what it means for the Blue Jays to bring the Toronto-born Martin back home.
This is why two National League GMs predicted three weeks ago that Martin was going to Toronto, no matter the price. And Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos, who had never spent more than $16 million on a free-agent in his tenure, sure paid it. Happily.
Hey, as the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox have been trying to tell us for years, it's just money.
The difference now - with a record 10 teams recording payrolls of at least $135 million this past season, according to figures obtained by USA TODAY Sports - is that everyone is spending it.
The baseball neighborhood that we grew up in sure looks a whole lot different today.
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