Florida Marlins Face A Challenging Off-Season

The Florida Marlins have baseball's smallest team payroll at a shade over $21M and they will likely have trouble keeping the team intact while remaining around $20M for 2009. The biggest hurdle the young Marlins face going into 2009, reports Mike Berardino of the South Flordia Sun-Sentinal, is the 18 arbitration eligible players for the 2009 season which is estimated to cost $33M to retain for 2009. Dan Uggla, Ricky Nolasco and Kevin Gregg are expected to account for about $12M of that $33M total (Uggla $5M, Gregg $4.5M, Nolasco, $2.5M).

Hanley Ramirez signed a six year, $70M extension in May that will pay him $5.5M in 2009. That's one-quarter of the 2008 payroll already.

Buster Olney figures that the money doesn't add up and likely means Uggla will be shopped this off-season.