Marlins Shell Out for Josh Johnson

The Marlins have reportedly reached agreement with pitcher Josh Johnson on a four-year $39 million contract extension.  Nice to see the Marlins finally lay out some money for top talent.

In fairness to the Fish, they did make a sizeable offer to Cuban pitcher Aroldis Chapman, and they had the good sense to lock Hanley Ramirez into a long-term deal that now looks like a brilliant move.

The contract Johnson received is the second biggest ever for a pitcher entering his second salary arbitration year, behind only Johan Santana’s four-year $40 million contract from the Twins before the 2005 season, and just ahead of the four-year $38 million contract Zack Greinke received from the Royals last off-season.

The contract Johnson received is a lot given the state of the current player salary market, and although Johnson’s 2009 stats were slightly better than Greinke’s 2008 stats, I suspected that Johnson might have gotten a big boost pitching his home games at Dolphin Stadium (formerly Pro Player Stadium), which is generally considered a much better pitchers’ park than the Royals’ Kauffman Stadium, a notorious hitters.

I checked the numbers, and Johnson’s 2009 road numbers were just about equal to Greinke’s 2008 road numbers.  Greinke has pitched exceptionally well at home the last two seasons, which may be one of the reasons Greinke likes playing for the Royals. Fans love him there, and he’s been extremely hard to beat at home.

I wonder what kind of bump the Royals got in their attendance when Greinke pitched last year?  The Royals went 10-7 in Greinke’s 17 home starts and 23-41 when another pitcher started.  Greinke went 10-3 in those 17 starts, meaning the Royals bullpen lost all four of the games in which Greinke got a no-decision.

Here’s the answer: the Royals drew an average of 24,706 fans per game in Greinke’s 17 starts and an average of 21,871 fans in their 63 other home games.  Of course, who the Royals played on a given day and what day of the week it was were bigger factors in their attendance.  However, it is also worth noting that Greinke did not start in the Royals’ home opener, which was one of their best attendance days of the year.

All things being equal, it’s probably fair to say that the Royals drew 3,000 more fans per game when Greinke started as opposed to any other Royals starter.  That’s significant, but also tends to show that the team’s overall record has a lot more to do with drawing in fans than having the league’s Cy Young winner starting.

Back to Johnson and the Marlins: given his age (26 in 2010) and his 2009 ratios, Johnson’s contract looks like a reasonable risk for the Marlins.  You never know whether any individual pitcher can stay healthy year to year, and there’s certainly no guarantee or even great probability that Johnson will have a 2010 campaign like Greinke’s 2009.

It’s worth noting that Greinke was the 6th player drafted in the 2002 Draft, while Johnson was a the 113th player selected in that same draft.  Also, Johnson and Greinke are the same age (within four months), so Greinke is a year ahead of Johnson in terms of their development.  In fact, the latter fact would have been the best reason for the Marlins to argue that Johnson only deserved a $35-$37 million contract in light of Greinke’s contract a year earlier.

That being said, the Marlins are taking the bull by the horns and locking in their very best young players to long-term deals, which means that so long as these players remain reasonably healthy, the Marlins should remain competitive for the next few seasons.

The Marlins have now won 87 and 84 games the last two seasons, after winning only 71 in 2007 and 78 in 2006.  It would be nice to see the Marlins spend a little more of their revenue-sharing money at this point in order to make pennant runs in 2010 and 2011.

I really don’t have a problem with a small market team like the Royals, Reds or Pirates keeping salaries low and taking advantage of revenue sharing in order to turn a profit every year.  Everyone everywhere should just accept the reality that baseball is a business, and the men who own baseball teams purchase them with an eye to making a profit, and not just serving the public good.

However, the Marlins don’t play in a small market.  According to wikipedia, the greater Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-Pompano Beach metropolitan area was the seventh largest metro area in the U.S. in 2008, just ahead of greater Atlanta.  In a market that large, the Marlins should be spending money on players closer to what the Braves spend (although one could make a good argument that the Braves spend too much for what they get — see, e.g., Derek Lowe), rather than being MLB’s perennial penny-pinchers.

In the long-run, laying out the money, particularly at times like the present, when the team has a nucleus of young talent and is coming off an 87-win season, would probably be in the Marlins’ best interests.  It’s hard for me to believe the Marlins can’t draw crowds in Miami with a pennant winning team, given the size of the market.

In most cases, the largest part of the profit major league owners make isn’t from annual bottom-line profits.  It’s from growing the value of the franchise by building winning teams and then selling the franchise for a lot more money than they paid to buy it in the first place.

At the end of the day, it’s about time for the Marlins to try to build another pennant winner.