Miami Marlins agree to sell team to Derek Jeter group

After months of being close, Derek Jeter and his group have won the bidding war to buy the Marlins

The Miami Marlins have officially recognized a winner bidder for the sale of the team, according to Ken Rosenthal. The Marlins originally agreed to sell the team this past offseason, and up until now they had really struggled to sell the organization. On Friday, the Derek Jeter and Bruce Sherman group won the bidding for $1.2 billion. Sherman will reportedly be the control person while Jeter will be the CEO.

Back in May, previous owner Jeffrey Loria was in a precarious situation. He either had to cut the price a second time or he had to take his team off the market. Obviously, the former was the result, and Jeter and company look to hopefully turn this franchise around from its money-losing ways.

The Marlins are expected to lose more than $60 million this season due to one of the lowest revenues in baseball, and their $115 million payroll is the largest in franchise history. Add a low-paying TV contract, and an average attendance that’s regularly in the bottom five in baseball and it’s a financial black hole.

Loria had owned the team since 2002, winning a World Series in 2003, but they haven’t made the playoffs since then. Only the Mariners have a longer playoff drought in baseball.

The selling of the franchise could start to get the ball rolling on making the organization better on the field. If you recall, during the deadline, the Marlins flirted with trading their core three in Christian Yelich, Marcell Ozuna and Giancarlo Stanton, but couldn’t in part because the team hadn’t been sold yet.

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Now at this point, neither of the three players are going to make it through waivers, but this winter they could be shopped — especially Stanton.

With Jeter expected to run the baseball side of things, it’ll be interesting to see if under new ownership they can not only turn it around financially, but performance wise as well.