Derek Jeter blames Giancarlo Stanton for Giancarlo Stanton trade

Derek Jeter isn’t the actual owner of the Marlins. He’s one of the minority owners who is part of the proceedings mostly so there is a popular face out there to lie interact with the media and public. With Giancarlo Stanton just officially traded earlier Monday morning and the winter meetings underway, Jeter is discussing that deal by blaming it on Stanton himself:

The Marlins were apparently just bored and repeatedly trying to come up with Stanton trade packages under the assumption he’d never accept a deal out of Miami, anyway, and then whoops, one of the trades was completed. Now, if Jeter had bothered to talk to Stanton at any point before trading him, then the Marlins might have had an idea about whether he’d accept a deal out of town or not. We don’t need to belabor that point, though, since this is just a front to make Stanton the reason Stanton was traded.

When new ownership took over the Marlins, they promised investors they would cut the payroll to $55 million so that they could make their money back: that is the primary goal of the Marlins right now. It’s not to win, it’s not to entertain — it’s to get back that investment on the team, because the ownership group has basically already spent the money they could slash are willing to spend on acquiring the franchise in the first place.

The Marlins could have kept Stanton and gotten down to their $55 million goal (or their higher, with-Stanton goal that’s been reported as well). They just would have traded basically everyone else on the team making seven figures in order to do so. They’re still going to do that even after dealing Stanton, except maybe they’ll hold on to Justin Bour and Dan Straily and Wei-Yin Chen, at least until the trade deadline.

The Marlins told Stanton they were going to burn down the team around him if he didn’t do the right thing and agree to one of the trade proposals coming in. And now Jeter, the mouthpiece for actual owner Bruce Sherman, is out here spinning this move as if Stanton could have stayed, if only he hadn’t decided he had to go.

The fact of the matter is that last time the Marlins decided to rebuild, they ended up getting an NL MVP and two ridiculously good outfielders in Marcell Ozuna and Christian Yelich on the roster at the same time. The Marlins weren’t prohibitively expensive, and they also weren’t that many additions away from being in the postseason race with the core they had. To an ownership group more concerned with recouping their initial investment in the team by making sure they can pocket all of the money franchises get simply by existing in MLB, though, the team was indeed prohibitively expensive.

They should be good again someday. The Marlins always are, and tanking does work. It’s just usually not something teams that seem to be successfully entering the late stages of a rebuild do, and it’s important to remember that everything Jeter does is just covering for the embarrassing actions of Miami’s new ownership group.

None of this is on Stanton: all he did was successfully recognize that some bullshit could go down in Miami over the course of a 13-year deal, and protected himself against it with an opt-out and a no-trade clause. And good thing, too.