MLB teams deal with constant ebbs and flows. Most franchises are not the Dodgers and can’t expect to perennially contend for a World Series. Instead, they often operate in competitive windows where they’ll push chips in to try to win it all before taking an inevitable step back when a productive core grows older and key pieces reach free agency. Those lulls often lead to calls to rebuild, but what does that practically look like?

It’s easy to say a down-on-their-luck team should tear it down to the studs, but how they go about doing that is another matter entirely. There are many different ways to trade away veteran pieces, and there is perhaps no better case study than the Miami Marlins of the late-2010s. Let’s dive into the various manners in which the Fish shipped out players, and the pros and cons inherent with each approach.

 

Giancarlo Stanton: Shedding salary

Perhaps the greatest player in Marlins history, Stanton racked up 267 homers over his eight years in Miami. In fact, the slugger meant so much to the franchise that then-president of baseball operations Michael Hill signed Stanton to a record 13-year, $325 million contract extension ahead of the 2015 season. He made good on that commitment over the next three seasons by slashing .265/.354/.580 and clubbing 113 home runs over 352 games, including a 59-homer 2017 campaign that earned him National League MVP honors.

So why did Miami decide to trade their franchise icon on the heels of the greatest season of his career? Simple: the money. The Fish concluded the 2017 campaign with an ugly 77-85 record, and were clearly not going to contend for a title any time soon. Given the enormous amount of money Stanton was owed over the next decade, they decided to ship him out while the going was good instead of waiting until he became an albatross.

A few years ago, BTV founder John Bitzer broke down Stanton’s value at the time of the trade, with his field value coming in at $261.7M and his remaining salary being $295M, netting out to a median surplus value of $-33.3 million. Despite his tremendous talent and production, the length and weight of Stanton’s contract ultimately made him a net negative for an acquiring team, and Miami was compensated accordingly.

On 11 December, 2017, the Marlins and Yankees lined up on a deal that sent Stanton and $30 million to New York in exchange for veteran infielder Starlin Castro (whose contract was also underwater, albeit not by as much) and mid-tier prospects José Devers and Jorge Guzmán. The paltry return may have surprised casual fans, but it came out perfectly even by our numbers, with each side taking on $-3.3 million in surplus value.

Unsurprisingly, nothing much came of any of the pieces the Marlins acquired, as Castro had an uninspiring two-year run in South Florida while Devers and Guzmán each received the briefest of looks in the big leagues. Conversely, Stanton has been excellent when he’s been on the field with the Yankees (though not quite at his Hall of Fame-caliber previous form), but has dealt with myriad injuries and, at almost 37 years old, is likely done as an everyday player.

So what can a big-league team learn from the Stanton trade moving forward? Quite frankly: the money matters. Giancarlo Stanton was a top-10 player in the entire sport at the time of the trade, and the enormity of his contract led to not only a negligible prospect return, but the need for the Marlins to take on another underwater contract as well as to pay down some of Stanton’s remaining money. As with the Nolan Arenado trade to the Cardinals in 2021, it doesn’t matter how good a player is on the field if his contract is too onerous.

A modern-day comparable could be Mike Trout, who is owed close to $150 million by the Angels. Trout is still productive enough (although much like Stanton is a far cry from his prime), but is owed so much money that the Halos would need to offer up plenty of cash to get another team to bite. Sometimes where fans see an MVP-level player, front offices see a burdensome contract that they wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.

 

J.T. Realmuto: Putting all the eggs in one prospect basket

Realmuto went from being a relatively unheralded third-round pick to one of the best two-way catchers in the sport during his four-plus years with the Marlins. Unfortunately for Miami, his ascent didn’t line up with their competitive window, as his first All-Star selection came in 2018 when the club posted a woeful 63-98 record.

With two years of team control remaining and coming off of an excellent .825 OPS, 4.4 bWAR 2018 campaign, Realmuto was one of the most prized trade chips of the 2018-19 offseason. The division-rival Phillies came calling with an impressive package of top-100 pitching prospect Sixto Sánchez, toolsy catcher Jorge Alfaro and young left-hander Will Stewart, as well as $250,000 in international bonus pool space.

Sánchez immediately took up residence as the Marlins’ top prospect, and Alfaro slotted in as the club’s starting catcher. Sánchez continued to stake his claim as one of the most talented young pitchers in the sport, posting a 2.76 ERA across 114 innings split between High-A and Double-A in 2019. Alfaro provided perfectly serviceable work that year as well, putting up a .736 OPS over 465 trips to the plate.

Unfortunately, the following season the train veered off the tracks. The COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the 2020 minor league campaign, and Sánchez was limited to seven big-league outings that year in which he worked to a solid 3.46 ERA over 39 frames. Alfaro got into just 31 contests of his own, limping to a .624 OPS.

Things didn’t get better from there, as Alfaro put up an almost-identical .625 OPS in 92 games in 2021 before being dumped to the Padres the following winter. Sánchez had even worse luck, as multiple shoulder surgeries scuttled all of 2021 and 2022, while he made his way into just one game in 2023 and 15 total in 2024. His 6.06 ERA across 35 ⅔ major league innings in 2024 marked the end of his professional career. Will Stewart, meanwhile, posted a sub-4.00 ERA just once in four minor league seasons with the Marlins, and has been out of affiliated ball since the end of 2023.

In retrospect, the Realmuto trade looks lopsided due in large part to the complete lack of impact the Marlins received from their acquired young talent, while Realmuto went on to be arguably the best catcher in Phillies history. But it didn’t look that way at the time of the trade.

The 27-year-old Realmuto had just over four years of big league experience under his belt at the time; one breakout campaign and two other solid seasons. He was a good player, but he wasn’t a lock to become the best catcher in baseball for the next half-decade. Meanwhile, Sánchez was arguably the top pitching prospect in the sport with legitimate ace upside, and Alfaro was a perfectly cromulent fill-in for Realmuto behind the plate. In an alternate universe, the Marlins could have gotten similar, or at least solid enough, production from Alfaro while adding a top-of-the-rotation arm with six years of team control.

Unfortunately for Miami, that alternate reality never came to pass. The package the Marlins received was completely dependent upon their budding star fulfilling his potential, and when that didn’t happen the whole trade went down in flames. The Marlins went with a quality-over-quantity trade package, reeling in one blue-chip talent and a second-rate big leaguer (as well as a lottery ticket in Stewart and some bonus pool money) instead of getting multiple bites at the prospect apple with a larger haul of lower-tier youngsters.

That boom-or-bust strategy completely blew up in their faces, and that’s just the risk a team runs when making a trade of that sort. Plenty of teams in the future will put all of their eggs in one prospect basket when trading away a talented player, and some will end up with golden geese while others are left with nothing but broken shells.

 

Christian Yelich: When a massive prospect haul goes wrong

2010 first-round pick Christian Yelich had been a mainstay in the Marlins’ lineup since his debut in mid-2013, and had produced an excellent .290/.369/.432 line across 2,812 trips to the plate in Miami. With his club staring down the barrel of a lengthy rebuild, Hill once again decided to trade away one of his prized possessions in Yelich and his very team-friendly four years of team control.

In January of 2018 the Brewers bowled him over with a four-player package that featured top-100 prospects Lewis Brinson and Isan Díaz, as well as 23rd-ranked Brewers prospect Monte Harrison and young right-hander Jordan Yamamoto. Brinson and Harrison immediately slotted in as Miami’s top two prospects for the 2018 season according to MLB Pipeline, with Díaz also landing in the top-10 and Yamamoto coming in at 23rd. Quite the haul.

However, there were a few cracks starting to show in the armor of those youngsters. Brinson was as toolsy as they come, but had already been flipped once before at the 2016 deadline for Josh Hader. Ditto for Díaz, who was part of a Jean Segura trade in January 2016. Often, when a highly-touted prospect is traded away by multiple organizations it means that those clubs are seeing something they don’t like and cashing out their chips before they hit their nadir.

Much like Brinson, Harrison was an athletic freak of an outfielder who had a very high ceiling, but had struggled with injuries in his four minor league seasons to that point, appearing in more than 80 games in a season just once. 

Lastly, Yamamoto was a classic undersized back-end starter type, but had yet to play above High-A at that point. All four prospects had various degrees of upside, but all four had serious question marks as well.

Unfortunately for the Marlins, none of the quartet panned out. Brinson, the headliner of the package, appeared in parts of four seasons with Miami at the big-league level, wherein he posted an atrocious .573 OPS across 1,056 plate appearances. They eventually cut him loose after the 2021 season, and after a pit stop with the Giants in 2022 he was out of affiliated ball for good.

Somehow, Harrison fared even worse in two cups of coffee with the Marlins, producing only a .493 OPS in 41 games. The moribund Angels gave him a shot in 2022, but he flamed out after nine games and never made it back to the big leagues.

Díaz was able to hang around for parts of three seasons in Miami, but worked to a .562 OPS over 145 games. He got blink-and-you’ll-miss-it looks with the Giants and Tigers in 2023, but never got back to the Show and is now playing professionally in Mexico.

Yamamoto was the most productive of the bunch in a Marlins uniform, but that’s really not saying much. In 90 innings across two seasons he posted a 6.20 ERA and punched out 95 batters. He also got another brief stint in the majors, this one with the Mets in 2021, and was out of affiliated ball after 2022.

All told, the Marlins got -5.9 bWAR out of their four-player return for Christian Yelich. So what did the Brewers get from their end of the deal? All Yelich has done is slash .277/.371/.475 over 1,091 games in Milwaukee, mashing 413 extra-base hits and swiping 160 bags. The 2018 National League MVP’s 27.5 bWAR in a Brewers uniform places him seventh in franchise history, and he was named the first team captain in Brewers history a few weeks ago.

John Bitzer also broke down the Yelich deal a few years back, with the numbers turning out incredibly lopsided (unsurprisingly) in favor of the Brewers. When the piece was written following the 2021 season, Yelich had turned in $107.2 million in surplus value for Milwaukee, while the Fish had gotten $-44.9 million from their four-player return.

The Yelich deal can only be looked back upon as an unmitigated disaster. Trading away a budding star is always a risky proposition, and whiffing on all four pieces of the return is enough to set a franchise back years. The Yelich calamity should serve as a warning to teams hoping to cash in on top-tier talent before they hit free agency, as even the highest-ceiling prospects can crash and burn. 

But what about when the prospect package does deliver results?

 

Marcell Ozuna: When a massive prospect haul goes right

For five seasons, outfielder Ozuna provided light-tower power for exciting Marlins teams. In 653 games in South Florida, Ozuna slashed .277/.329/.457 with 96 homers and 123 doubles. In what should be a familiar theme, the two-time All-Star (at that time) was traded away in December of 2017 when he had two years of team control remaining as his team remained far away from contention.

In stepped the St. Louis Cardinals to acquire two seasons’ worth of Ozuna, who ponied up a package of Sandy Alcantara, Zac Gallen, Daniel Castano and Magneuris Sierra. Alcantara was the prize of the deal, as the Dominican right-hander slotted in third among Marlins prospects in 2018 behind Brinson and Harrison, while Sierra sat seventh, Gallen 14th and Castano off the list entirely.

Fortunately, this four-man band produced some hits. Alcantara remains the Marlins’ ace to this day, having fired 1,281 innings of 3.68 ERA ball over eight seasons with the team, earning himself a Cy Young Award and two All-Star nods in the process.

Gallen only made his way into seven major league games before being shipped out of town, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t help them. At the 2019 deadline the Marlins and Diamondbacks lined up on a rare prospect-for-prospect challenge trade with Jazz Chisholm, Jr. going the other way. Gallen has gone on to post a 3.85 ERA in the desert, but Marlins fans have nothing to complain about as Chisholm put up a .749 OPS in five years in Miami, being named an All-Star once, before he was flipped to the Yankees in 2024 for a trio of youngsters.

As for Castano and Sierra, they didn’t do much for the Marlins. The former appeared in parts of four seasons, working to a 4.47 ERA in 88 ⅔ innings. He had a brief stint in Korea in 2024 and hasn’t played professionally since. Sierra never homered in 211 Marlins games, putting up an atrocious .549 OPS. His last big-league opportunity came in 2022 with the Angels (there they are again) and he’s plied his trade in independent leagues ever since.

Ozuna, meanwhile, lived up to his billing with the Cardinals, slashing.262/.327/.451 with 52 homers in 278 games. The Redbirds let him walk after the 2019 season and he spent the next six in Atlanta. It was there that Ozuna evolved into his final form, posting a fabulous .836 OPS over 683 contests. 

Now nine years after the fact, the Marlins are still reaping the benefits from the Ozuna trade. A team-friendly extension has kept Alcantara in South Florida for close to a decade, and they’re certain to exercise his $21 million team option for 2027.

On top of that, Miami was able to turn Gallen into Chisholm (perhaps a lateral move, but still a very nice player), and eventually traded him for more young talent years down the line. The fact that Castano and Sierra never turned into anything is incidental in light of how much they’ve gotten out of the top half of the return. For teams looking to cash in on an expiring asset, this trade should serve as something of a blueprint moving forward. 

 

Conclusion

There are multiple ways to skin a cat when a team conducts a firesale. The Marlins tried practically all of them when they dismantled their core in the late-2010s. The lack of sustained success in the years that followed can be directly linked to the failure to acquire enough meaningful young players in exchange for their established stars.

When trading away Stanton, arguably the best hitter in the game at the time, the team prioritized cost savings at the expense of prospect quality. Unsurprisingly, the two youngsters they acquired did nothing to replace the gaping hole Stanton’s departure left.

The Marlins tried a different tactic with Realmuto, shipping out a budding star for one uber-prospect and a pair of ancillary pieces. Sixto Sánchez had limitless potential, but when injuries wrecked his promising career there were no other high-quality assets acquired alongside him to salvage the deal, and it ultimately went down as an all-timer of a heist.

The Yelich deal signifies what can go wrong with spreading out the prospect capital in a deal, as the quartet of boom-or-bust prospects the Fish reeled in all happened bust. There’s no such thing as a surefire prospect, and the Marlins learned that the hard way when four high-ceiling youngsters all rolled snake eyes.

On the other hand, flipping Ozuna for Alcantara and Gallen was a stroke of genius. For the price of a quality outfielder that didn’t fit their timeline, the Marlins snagged their ace for the next decade and a solid starter that they turned into an All-Star infielder. The Yelich return could just as easily have yielded similar results to this, if not better, but the prospect roulette wheel favored these guys instead of those ones.

It makes sense why teams that don’t have hopes of contention look to sell off expiring assets. Loading up for the future will benefit the organization more than hanging on to established players for futile playoff hopes. However, the manner in which those major league contributors are traded away matters a great deal, and the type of return (whether it be prospects or money) a selling club looks for can drastically change their trajectory. If the Marlins’ trade history teaches us anything, it’s that there’s no such thing as an easy firesale.