If the Marlins were normal, they would be perfect for Giancarlo Stanton

In 2000, there were 47 players with 30 homers or more. In 2014, there were 11. Dingers are rare. In the land of the powerless, the 30-dinger man is king. Teams will pay a lot for a 30-homer player on the open market.

And if the 30-dinger man is king, what is Giancarlo Stanton? The king of the king. It’s like when you watched Empire Strikes Back for the first time and found out that Darth Vader had a boss. Stanton is the Emperor Palpatine of dingers, except he’s really likable and marketable. Assuming he recovers from his horrific beaning like he’s expected to, Stanton is going to make so much money. So very much. His future contract fascinates me, and it’s in the news again. From MLB.com writer, Joe Frisaro:

“Our negotiations, we want to keep them private,” Marlins president of baseball operations Michael Hill said in a conference call on Wednesday afternoon. “We don’t want to negotiate this through the media. I will say that we’ve reached out to (Stanton’s) representative and that negotiations are ongoing.”

Except, what this blog post presupposes is, what if the Marlins aren’t weird?

That is, imagine the Marlins are a normal team. Let’s pick a stock photo and give them a new owner. This is Larry. Larry Benson.

Larry is a white guy, people think he’s funny. He’s a real estate investor who makes a lot of money. And he’s been quoted on the record as saying “He’s committed to bringing a winning team to Miami” and “Miami deserves another winner.” He watches Friends reruns on his phone when he gets a chance, and he loves cribbage. No one has a problem with Larry. Not even his wife’s ex-husband, Thomas.

Larry likes baseball.

In this scenario, the Marlins are just another team. The sell-offs after 1997 and 2003 and 2012 didn’t happen. The fan base wasn’t jerked around by the nose and dropped into a wading pool of thumbtacks. Their owner is normal. Is this the kind of team that should sign Giancarlo Stanton?

First, look at what Giancarlo might be paid. Dave Cameron took a guess two months ago:

The full current-market rate for those 10 years comes out to $302 million, with the 10% discount knocking it down to $270 million. But remember, these numbers don’t include the two arbitration years, which add another ~$30 million to the total, so even with the 10% discount assumption on a super-long deal, we’d be looking at a total contract worth $300 million over 12 years.

$300 million? That will buy a lot of computers to give to baseball writers who read the words “$300 million,” stopped writing, walked down to a convenience store, bought a Coke, walked home, took a sip, and then did a spit take all over their old computers. It will also buy a lot of other things. Stanton will figure it out. And he might get that money, too.

What kind of team could even conceive of giving a contract like that?

A team that signed one player for $30 million for a decade would need to have a clean future payroll. That clean payroll for the Marlins has a lot to do with the post-2012 selloff that didn’t happen in this scenario, but we’ll pretend they didn’t sign those players in the first place.

Here are the Marlins’ current payroll commitments beyond this season:

That’s $22.1 million in guaranteed money from now until the end of time. That doesn’t include the eventual raises for the arbitration-eligible players, like Giancarlo Stanton, nor does it include the eventual paydays for players like Jose Fernandez, Christian Yelich, and Marcell Ozuna. When it comes to contractual obligations, though, the Marlins are mostly free and clear. They can take on a whopper of a contract -- one that disappoints mightily -- and still have enough to build a good team around it. This is, again, a similar spot to the Mariners last offseason, before they signed Robinson Cano.

And it’s not like we’re talking about the Marlins signing a 31-year-old second baseman. We’re talking about a power god in his mid-20s, one of the safest contract bets in the entire baseball universe, even if there’s no such thing as a truly safe contract bet.

The team that signed Stanton for 10 years or longer would be a team with youth and the potential to win soon, a rare and desirable combination. Stanton combines with Yelich and Ozuna to form an outfield that’s somewhere south of Albert Belle/Kenny Lofton/Manny Ramirez, but it’s still just about as good of a young outfield as we’ve seen in years. Assuming Jose Fernandez is back at some point, the pitching is a good mix of young, promising, and cheap.

The outfield and pitching are the only reliable parts of the roster, and you always have to make finger scare quotes when using “reliable” to describe baseball players. Still, that’s an enviable head start. The farm system is heralded, but I don’t think you have to stretch too much to see the Marlins as potential contenders. Heck, they would have contended for longer in the 2014 season if Fernandez were healthy.

The signing team would need to play in a big market. The Marlins play in the eighth-largest market in baseball -- the fourth-largest among teams that don’t have to share their market. In this the-owner-isn’t-despised scenario, the Marlins still don’t draw well, but Larry has a plan. That plan is to build an exciting, sustainable team that makes the city of Miami excited about baseball.

The first step would be to secure one of the game’s brightest young stars to a long-term deal. Let’s see if there’s anyone who matches that description ...

Add it up, and the Marlins are the perfect team for Stanton. If someone’s going to pay him the money -- and someone’s going to pay him the money -- why not a big-market team looking to reestablish relevance and contend, at the same time their neo-youth movement gives them some payroll flexibility?

Except, they’re the Marlins, with a decades-long history of erratic decision-making and disregard for the loyalty of their players and fans. It’s possible that Stanton really, really loves Miami and the surrounding area. That counts for a lot. If the baseball team counts for anything, though, the Marlins had better hope Stanton lives more in that alternate reality than the reality the rest of us live in.