Marlins Owner Jeffrey Loria Did Not Sucker Giancarlo Stanton into Losing Future

Boxing promoters, politicians, televangelists draped in gaudy jewelry, Miami Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria.

You take everything these people say, especially the promises, with a dump truck’s load of skepticism. They’ve earned it.

For Loria, maybe the most distrusted, despised owner in Major League Baseball, the shattered promises and buried hopes splatter his track record for nearly as long as he has owned the Marlins. From conning his way into a new state-of-the-art ballpark to his epic pump-and-dump in order to fill it in 2012, Loria has built the distrust with solid steel and thick layers of concrete.

This winter, however, he is trying to take a sledgehammer to it.

The blow to break up the distrust’s foundation was signing superstar right fielder Giancarlo Stanton to a jaw-dropping 13-year, $325 million contract extension. There are opt-outs and a no-trade clause that could allow the Marlins to get Stanton on the cheap for the first six years of the deal.

Many analysts see this as a win for Stanton. It is, but don’t be duped. That clause is just as much for the team’s benefit as it could spend a total of only $107 million for six seasons of Stanton, and that could end up being as ridiculous a bargain as anyone can find anywhere.

lynne sladky/Associated Press

Even with the deal, there are signs not to trust it since Loria and team president David Samson seem to be rooting for Stanton to opt out. Also, the sun rises in the east, sets in the west and Miami is a destination spot. 

That last part has long been true, although recently no one saw that as the case when it came to the city’s baseball franchise. But Loria and his baseball men have made enough sledgehammer strokes to show that the Marlins are playing to win in 2015.

“We are going to be surrounding [Stanton], we have already started to surround him, with All-Star-caliber players, and there will be more,” Loria told the Miami Herald's Manny Navarro.

“We can afford it," Loria continued. "We are going to surround him with an improved lineup as well.”

So far, Loria is living up to the promise.

The Marlins have had an eventful offseason. They dealt nine players from their system, including pitching prospect Andrew Heaney, in order to get the likes of Dee Gordon, Mat Latos, Dan Haren, Aaron Crow and Andre Rienzo.

They also signed free-agent slugger Michael Morse—.279/.336/.475, 16 home runs, 130 OPS-plus—to a two-year, $16 million deal. That is another potential bargain considering the Kansas City Royals gave Kendrys Morales a two-year, $17 million deal after he hit .218/.274/.338 with a 75 OPS-plus last season. Morse’s addition puts another power threat in the lineup to back up Stanton, and the platoon splits at first base with incumbent Garrett Jones could give the Marlins a dynamite combination at the position.

Add those newcomers to what the Marlins already have in 22-year-old ace Jose Fernandez, 23-year-old left fielder Christian Yelich, 24-year-old center fielder Marcell Ozuna and 24-year-old pitcher Henderson Alvarez, and suddenly the Marlins are legitimately contending for a National League Wild Card berth next summer, two seasons after losing 100 games.

“When you lose 100 games, you've got a lot of work to do,” president of baseball operations Michael Hill told Joe Frisaro of MLB.com. “We made a lot of strides in 2014, but as we've said, we still have more to do and further to go, because we still aren't playing into October, and that's the ultimate goal. We wanted to continue to build upon the assets that we have.

“We feel like we’ve got good, young players, and we want to surround them with players who give us the opportunity to win games,” Hill continued. “I think we're on our way into doing that. We're trying to make our club better and address needs we've identified to help us improve.”

The Marlins finished 77-85 in 2014 on the backs of Stanton and those other young players, and were within 3.5 games of a Wild Card spot as late as the second week of September.

That success has led the Marlins to offer contract extensions to Fernandez, Yelich, shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria with an offer for Ozuna soon to come, according to CBSSports.com's Jon Heyman.

People not so critical of Loria will credit him with foresight to see his 2012 all-in experiment was not working. They can and will say he isn’t such a swindler, that he is a man who knows art and baseball and he knew the painting he paid for a few seasons ago was a monstrosity. Then again, no one chastised the return for trading Hanley Ramirez, Anibal Sanchez, Mark Buehrle, Jose Reyes and Josh Johnson. They were angered at Loria for hoodwinking Marlins fans.

Stanton, Morse, the trades and the potential commitments to a young core of pitchers and position players could bring these fans back. Hope is a powerful thing. It can make people forget the hard times, the times when distrust seemed like it would never melt.

Tom Lynn/Associated Press

Giancarlo Stanton is a person, too. He played through those hard times. He felt the distrust, believing as recently as last season that it was too thick to see through. He even told Tim Brown of Yahoo Sports late last season that “five months doesn’t change five years.”

Then the Marlins committed $325 million—or $107 million—to him and those feelings started fading. Now about a month later, those ill feelings should be completely gone.

The Marlins have built themselves into contenders with Stanton as the centerpiece. The franchise is showing it believes in the young talent by supplementing it with more youth and veteran help.

Defend or despise Loria, he has done right by his once “pissed off” superstar…so far. Time will tell how this all plays out, but as of Christmas 2014, Stanton has to be feeling good about the franchise of which he is the face.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News, and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.