Miami Makes Out Poorly With Marlins

             Multiple sources have reported that the Miami Marlins have agreed to trade “just about any (Marlins) player making money” to the Toronto Blue Jays. This includes players signed last offseason to expensive contracts like Jose Reyes and Mark Buehrle. In addition, this is not the first major trade that the Marlins have been involved in the past year. The team had already traded both Hanley Ramirez and Heath Bell during a disappointing 2012 season. The Marlins remaining best player Giancarlo Stanton summed up the reaction by many of the team’s fans when he tweeted, “Alright, I'm pissed off!!! Plain & Simple.”

            This seeming fire sale of many of the team’s best players was not supposed to happen to the “new” Miami Marlins. The Florida Marlins had been notorious for trading or releasing the team’s best players because the team could allegedly not afford their salaries. After both the 1997 and 2003 World Series wins, the Marlins jettisoned either high salaried veterans or younger players poised to sign large contracts to other teams. The Marlins had long stated that its having to play in what is now known as Sun Life Stadium (where the Miami Dolphins play football) caused the team to be unable to draw fans and to generate enough revenue to sign star players. The team also argued that it needed a new publicly financed stadium for the organization to be profitable – even though Deadspin showed the team made millions of dollars in operating income in the 2008 and 2009 seasons.  When the Marlins came to an agreement with Miami-Dade County to subsidize $409 million of the $515 million of a new stadium through public bonds, it seemed like team’s frugality era may be over.

            So why is the team now trading many of its best players? The stadium became part of a surface identity strategy. In essence, the Marlins employed strategies and tactics that on the surface were largely aim to appeal to its Latino fan base. In particular, the Marlins, were trying to target Cuban American baseball fans. There are three heavily publicized examples of these efforts. First, the team decided to place location of the new stadium near the site of the Orange Bowl to be closer to many of Miami’s Cuban American residents in Little Havana. Second, the team designed both the interior and exterior of Marlins Park had with the “inspiration for the stadium’s electric color scheme, with its fluorescent-green outfield wall, [from] the palette of the Spanish painter Joan Miró.” Third, the team traded for and hired Ozzie Guillen to be its manager not only because of his previous success with the Chicago White Sox but also because of he was of Latino descent. While this surface identity strategy was being implemented, the Marlins did also make a significant commitment to making their team better on the field. The team signed multimillion-dollar contracts with players like Reyes, Buherle, and Heath Bell while pursuing a long-term deal with Albert Pujols.

            Ultimately, all of the elements of both the off-the-field and on-field strategy failed. The stadiums location is a major problem as there is a lack of infrastructure in place for many fans to arrive and leave from Marlins Park. Little Havana is filled with small side streets and only 5,000 new parking spaces were made available even though the new stadium is very difficult to access via public transportation. In addition, Marlins Park’s design has had its supporters but also many critics. For example, Hall of Fame pitcher and ESPN broadcaster Orel Hershiser said the stadium looked “like a cruise ship had a baby with a spaceship.”

            Perhaps the biggest symbol of failure with this surface identity strategy, however, came from Guillen. The Marlins first manager grew up in Venezuela – which obviously is a different experience than many of the residents who migrated from Cuba to Little Havana. And Guillen is not shy about expressing his opinions. He immediately angered many of the Marlins Cuban American fan base by expressing support for Fidel Castro. His comments caused the Marlins to suspend the team’s manager for five games. After returning to the Marlins bench, Guillen managed the team to a 69-93 record. While Guillen was fired after his first season, he is not the only person who caused the team’s on-field problems. None of the free agents matched or exceeded the value of their contracts with their performance during their initial year of their contracts.

            These failures have created a nightmare scenario both for the Marlins and Miami-Dade County. Attendance projections for the new stadium vastly overestimated actual attendance during the first season at Marlins Park. The team’s inability to generate high enough increases in stadium / gameday revenues meant it was saddled with player contracts it could not afford. In addition, Miami-Dade County is now likely going to have to pay $2.4 billion in principal and interest payments on its $409 million in bonds without every obtaining the expected commercial and residential development around the stadium that county officials hoped for when agreeing to the subsidies.

            While there is plenty of blame to spread around, the core problems stem from the team’s surface identity strategy employed to attract Cuban American fans. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with trying to appeal to a certain demographic group or market segment. In fact, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim have implemented a successful strategy in targeting Latino fans.

It is the execution of the Marlins strategy that has been the problem. The team appears to have believed that placing a stadium in Little Havana even when there was little infrastructure to support the venue would cause more fans to attend games. It also seemed to believe that hiring a Venezuelan American manager to appeal to a Cuban American fan base even when manager did not come from the same background as its Cuban American fans. Yes, the Marlins made seemingly bad player personnel decisions. But the team was never going to successfully appeal to the Cuban American fan base using this surface identity strategy. Instead, the team could have spent more money on developing infrastructure around the stadium to make it easier for fans around Little Havana to attend games. The organization could have hired qualified Cuban Americans for jobs within the business and team operations side of the organization as well as signed more contracts more vendors from the Cuban American community. Instead, it made decisions largely to appeal to certain demographics in ways that were both expensive and did not make sense. While the team does have a new stadium, the new Miami Marlins now look a lot like the old Florida Marlins.