Marlins Pay a High Price To Win

The nonsense quote of the playoffs was the assertion by Florida Marlin pitcher Kevin Brown that “Money didn’t win this thing. Heart and determination did.”

Heart and determination obviously played their parts in the Marlins’ winning the National League pennant, but Brown can’t truly believe the Marlins would have gone from 80-82 to 92-70 had they not spent $89 million on six free agents last winter and forestalled a summer of grumbling by Gary Sheffield by signing their right fielder to a $60-million extension.

The Marlins are not alone in this business of checkbook baseball but their success with it has rubbed many conservatives the wrong way, particularly since it wasn’t long before owner Wayne Huizenga was insisting his team would lose $30 million and he was going to sell.

Of course, the Marlins’ pennant run seems to have Huizenga reconsidering. He was like a kid, running around the Turner Field bases after the Marlins had won in Atlanta, and he may be privately hoping that revived enthusiasm in South Florida will generate interest in a new stadium, influencing him to keep the club.

In the meantime, among the disgruntled, Chicago Cub President Andy MacPhail said, “You don’t do the game a favor going to the postseason when you lose $30 million and feel like you have to sell the team. There’s something very--what’s the word?--wrong about that.

“There will be people in South Florida who are enjoying this postseason who’d think my opinion is nonsense. Huizenga is someone who has been really successful financially as a businessman, but all the emotional satisfaction he is getting now can’t alter the fact he is still selling the team because of the financial pain.”

Big-payroll teams have dominated the playoffs the last two seasons. This year, the Nos. 1, 2 and 4 on the payroll ladder, the New York Yankees, Baltimore Orioles and Atlanta Braves, were eliminated this year, but the Nos. 3 and 5, the Cleveland Indians and Marlins, are playing in the World Series.

John Hart, the Indians’ general manager, said there’s more to winning than littering the field with dollars.

“There have been a lot of expensive train wrecks,” he said. “There have been a lot of teams that have spent a lot of money unwisely.”

Nevertheless, he acknowledged, a consistent revenue stream “allows you to sustain success. Clubs like Montreal and Minnesota can do it for a year or two but then have to back off when the players become too expensive.

“You have to have the revenue to compete consistently,” he said. “In our case, we don’t have a media-driven market like New York. We have to rely on attendance. Our fans have responded to what we’ve done [with four years of sellouts at Jacobs Field] and accepted our turnover this year [the departures of Albert Belle and Kenny Lofton] as being in the best, long-term interest of the team.

“Still, we’re not Daddy Warbucks. We have limits. We can’t afford to have a club littered with expensive busts. We’re basically a mid-market team with a large revenue base and we always have to remember what we did when we were small market. Scouting and development are still the foundation.”

The Indians have gone from an $8-million payroll in Hart’s first year, 1991, to about $60 million, counting benefit payments. They innovated the art of maintaining their nucleus by signing the best of their young players to multiyear contracts, buying out arbitration eligibility and the early years of free agency.

“There’s some risk,” Hart said. “But it’s also given us a measure of cost predictability.”

In Florida, pitcher Brown insists that fortitude has led to the Marlins’ good fortune. In truth, it started with owner Huizenga’s fortune.

HEART RATE

Fortitude can’t be dismissed. It may be no coincidence that the Indians are back in the World Series with David Justice and Marquis Grissom providing a large dose of clubhouse leadership.

Meanwhile, the Atlanta Braves, their former teammates, are on the golf course, many muttering about something missing. The club was clearly down on the approach, attitude and performance of Lofton, the Justice-Grissom trade-off who could be done in Atlanta and headed for a bleaker free-agent market than once envisioned, though the Dodgers may be intrigued.

In the wake of elimination by the Marlins, Atlanta catcher Javy Lopez said, “We really spend too much time around here worrying about what the other team is doing and about umpires and about claiming everybody in the entire world is against us. That attitude is killing us. If we continue to think that way every time we reach the playoffs, we’re going to be drowning in a half-full glass of water.”

There was another precinct heard from on this.

St. Louis Cardinal Manager Tony La Russa couldn’t resist. He was asked about the Braves’ complaints about umpire Eric Gregg’s strike zone during Livan Hernandez’s 15-strikeout performance in Game 5 of the league championship series.

“As many games as have gone [Atlanta’s] way because they have pitchers who hit that dot if that dot is a little off the plate--[Tom] Glavine, [Greg] Maddux, [John] Smoltz a little and [Denny] Neagle--when it burns them it’s a beautiful irony.”

La Russa also took off on comments by Atlanta pitching coach Leo Mazzone, who said the Cardinals had given the Braves motivation during last year’s league championship series by their celebratory actions [“looking in our dugout and pointing at us”] after St. Louis had taken a short-lived 3-1 lead in games.

La Russa denied any pointing and said, “[The Braves] deserve to be knocked off their perch. There are not many mirrors in their clubhouse. They see things their way and don’t see them the other way.”

AND . . .

* Grissom, on the elimination of the Braves: “Why should I care? They didn’t want me. I’m not sad for them.”

* Houston Astro owner Drayton McLane, saying he was elated at the team’s progress under Manager Larry Dierker, is working on an extension for the former pitcher-broadcaster, but the key to the team’s 1998 chances to repeat in the National League Central probably hinge on contract talks with Darryl Kile, who will be the hottest pitcher on the free-agent market.

Kile made $1.7 million while winning 19 games with a 2.57 ERA, striking out 205 and leading the league with 256 innings. He could go to $5 million or more, which doesn’t jibe with McLane’s plans to maintain a $33-million payroll.

* If the Kansas City Royals aren’t the team moving from the American League Central to the National League Central--and with the Royals up for sale, they probably will reject the option--then the Milwaukee Brewers figure to move. And if the Brewers decide to stay, which is unlikely, then the Minnesota Twins will move.

Said Wendy Selig-Prieb, the Brewers’ club counsel and daughter of owner Bud Selig, who is also acting commissioner (ah, what webs they weave), “We are in a unique position. We have a 28-year history as an American League club, and preceding that we have the National League history of the Braves. That does distinguish us and puts us in the position of wanting to do what’s best for baseball.”

* The move of the Detroit Tigers from the American League East, where they competed against high rollers in New York, Baltimore and Toronto, to the Central Division, where only Cleveland is the big spender now that the Chicago White Sox seem to be retrenching, should be a competitive plus for the improving Tigers.

Said club President John McHale, “We’re with fewer clubs who can make up mistakes with money.”