DISCLAIMER: Friday Fun is a new segment where I write about something worth writing about that isn’t Philly related. It’s a working title.
With MLB (and NBA) expansion in the air and the newcomers of 1993 the Marlins and Rockies opening their season against one another, I want to look back on their last 33 years of baseball to see who is winning the battle of relative newcomers.
World Series
The very obvious place to start is with championships. The Marlins have two World Series titles (1997, 2003) and the Rockies have none. That’s a clear huge win considering the Phillies have been around since 1883 and only have two World Series titles themselves. In fact, those two wins put them 15th overall in terms of championships. Considering that’s a 1 every 16-year average, that’s pretty damn good. Of all the teams ahead of them on the list, the Marlins have been around by far the shortest with most blowing past 100 years.
Of course, Matt Holiday still hasn’t touched home plate, but the Rockies did at least go to the World Series in 2007.
Playoffs
While neither team has ever won their division (how weird is that?), the Rockies have the advantage with 5 wildcard births to 4. Albeit one of those is a 1 game Wildcard playoff loss, but it still counts. The Marlins haven’t actually won a playoff game since their last World Series win, 22 years ago. They were swept out of the playoffs both times.
All Time Record
Rockies: 2364 – 2818
Marlins: 2382 – 2792
That’s pretty damn close!1 That’s less than 1 loss and 1 win per season. We’ll see if the Rockies can close the gap on Opening Weekend.
How about head to head? They have played 243 times with the Marlins leading the all-time series 127-116. The Marlins are 77-44 in Miami while the Rockies are 72-50 in Denver.
Franchise Players
This is where things get personal to me. I live in Miami and despite my efforts, my oldest son is a Marlins fan. He is too young to really understand why the Marlins constantly trade away his favorite players while the Phillies always have stars (I try not to use this to my advantage because it feels wrong…but he is slowly seeing the light!). Jazz Chisholm was his guy, but now he barely has any connection to anyone except Sandy Alcantara and he’s probably going to be gone soon too. He’s 10 years old, but this is something that has been going on for the entire run of the franchise.
The Marlins have two unofficially retired numbers, other than #42. While no ceremony has officially raised these numbers to the rafters, no one is wearing them either:
- #5 for original Team Predisdent Carl Barger
- #16 for the tragically deceased Jose Fernandez
As for the Rockies, they have two legit retired numbers for two Hall of Famers:
- #17 for Todd Helton
- #33 for Larry Walker
Speaking of which, no Marlins have ever been inducted to the Hall of Fame. How could they? No one plays in Miami long enough to wear the hat for the plaque. In fact, only two Marlins have ever played more than 1000 games for the team: Luis Castillo (1128) and Jeff Conine (1014). Nine Rockies have accomplished the feat with Todd Helton almost doubling up Castillo (2247).
The Marlins are known for trading away their best players, but the Rockies aren’t immune here either. Troy Tulowitzki, Matt Holiday, Trevor Story, and Nolan Arenado were Rockies stars who didn’t spend their 30s in Colorado. Of course, they at least still had Helton, Walker, Andres Galarraga, Dante Bichette, Carlos Gonzalez, and Charlie Blackman.
Who do the Marlins have to hold on to? Miguel Cabrera should have been THE all-time Marlin. After winning a World Series as a rookie, the team should have done everything it could to keep maybe the best hitter of his generation in South Florida. Instead, he played 16 of his 21 first ballot Hall of Fame years in Detroit winning 2 MVPs, the first Triple Crown in 45 years, and 4 batting titles. He wasn’t the only future MVP traded away either. Christian Yelich should have spent the last decade with the Marlins along with JT Realmuto, Zac Gallen, Jesus Luzardo, Giancarlo Stanton, and Pablo Lopez. Here are two full rosters of stars the Marlins have traded away in their history. The Marlins seem to be great talent identifiers and developers, but so cheap that they can’t take advantage of it.
Attendance
Marlins: 17k per game. As anyone who watched the WBC can see, Miami is a baseball town. You wouldn’t know it based on attendance though. Their best season was the first one, drawing over 3m fans. The only other seasons where they drew over 2m was the 1997 WS season and 2012 when they opened Marlins Park and vowed to spend money for the first time in a decade (they traded everyone that same year). They have failed to draw 1m spectators 5 times not including the Covid year. They have finished last in the NL in attendance 12 years in a row and 18 out of the last 19 years. The only reason the numbers are as high as they are is because all the Phillies, Mets, and Dodgers fans buy up all the tickets whenever they are in town.
Rockies: 34k per game. Despite similar lack of success and not exactly being known as a baseball city, the Rockies DRAW. Only twice in the team’s history have they failed to draw 2m fans and both those years were 1.9m. 10 years have been over 3m with their inaugural season drawing almost 4.5m fans.
Ownership
The Marlins have been bought and sold 4 times starting with Wayne Huizenga, then John Henry, then there was a weird ownership trade where he went to Boston and Jeffrey Loria went from Montreal to Miami, and now Bruce Sherman who has barely enough cash to field the team. All of them have been cheap and happy to milk MLB revenue sharing to line their pockets over spending on players. Loria was especially bad pulling off the rare triple whammy of bulldozing the beloved Orange Bowl, crying poor to make the city pay for his new stadium (and lying about it), then gutting the payroll anyway (he also hired a pro-Castro sympathizer, Ozzie Guillen, to manage the team in a very anti-Castro Cuban community).
The Rockies have been owned for their entire 33-year existence by the Monfort brothers, Charles and Richard. However, they were actually owned by a guy named Mickey Monus originally and he is the one who brought baseball to Denver. He just sold the team before they ever played a game. While steady ownership can be seen as a good thing, these two really seem like dopes. How have they never figured out baseball in the Mile High City? Because the fans always come out, it’s almost like they are being steadily rewarded for doing a bad job. If any team’s ownership could use a change at the top, it’s Colorado’s.
Who Has it Better?
Flags fly forever is the old saying, but Marlins fans felt betrayed after both championships. Ownership immediately instituted a fire sale after both titles, barely letting the fans enjoy either one. You’d be hard pressed to find any Marlins fan who actually enjoys their team. Every time they get someone to be excited about, they leave. On the other side, the Rockies are a hopeless bunch but that never seems to matter to the fans. They keep coming out to the ballpark no matter what. I don’t know why, but they love their Rockies.
PS…Gary Sheffield is one of my favorite non-Phillies of all time and anyone who ever saw him in the batter’s box knows why.
PPS…I am taking my son to Opening Day tonight in Marlins Park
Stats: Baseball Reference
- I lost about 30 minutes trying to figure out why Colorado has played 8 more games than the Marlins because it isn’t including playoff record. Turns out the Rockies had played 2 more games before the 1994 strike and there were other times the Marlins didn’t need to play a full 162 and the Rockies went to extra game tiebreakers. ↩︎
Philly Front Office 
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