MarlinsNation

“My time will come.”  A simple statement and a push to bet on yourself. All in. And when you have the talents of a guy like Mike Trout, or in the Marlins’ case, Giancarlo Stanton, you can relax with the idea that indeed, your time will come. This is not a flash in a pan, but a sustained effort and display of pure talent.

Criticism will be levied towards the organization for not giving these guys more of a bone here. The Angels, not known for pinching pennies, did just that with Trout’s “raise” of only about 20K over the league minimum. Even the Marlins gave Giancarlo more in resigning him for $537K for the upcoming 2013 season. Certainly both players are worth more in terms of production. But this is the business of baseball. Stars make their money on the backend of their careers while establishing themselves in the early part of their career. For Stanton, like Trout, that time is now.

It won’t be that way forever though. The Marlins have yet to commit to Stanton. Jeffrey Loria, on his apology tour, admit that Stanton is a huge piece they want to see around in the future but he also refused to offer an extension to Stanton for this season. After this season, the Marlins and Giancarlo will engage in arbitration. The Marlins went through this with Miguel Cabrera who made $7.4M in his first year of arbitration, and was then traded to the Detroit Tigers (along with Dontrelle Willis) for roughly a bucket of baseballs. (Ok, Cameron Maybin and Andrew Miller…but might as well have been for nothing.)

This is the main difference though between the Marlins and Angels. The Angels have credibility and have made investments in the past – this past offseason pouring in $125M for Josh Hamilton. The Marlins, instead, are facing the black eye of trading away players they just signed to contracts after just one year in Miami. The good news, the Marlins don’t have any significant payroll commitments after this season and also are reportedly revisiting the idea of not offering no-trade clauses in contracts. Loria suggests that the Marlins will offer a multi-year contract extension in the future, just not this year. There may be a special no-trade or partial no-trade clause put in as a way to help Stanton feel more secure about his time in Miami.

So like Trout, Stanton’s time will come. In the meantime, it will be peanuts (by MLB standards, of course) and the Marlins will have to pony up. In Stanton, they have a generational hitter that they will need to lock up to help repair the vastly tarnished image this franchise has with its fans.