Marlins - Mets still undecided

by craig on Feb 11, 2008 8:08 AM EST in News and Rumors

As Mbaamin reported in the Weekend Chum Bucket, we still have no idea whether the Marlins will end up playing a home series against the Mets in Puerto Rico.

The Marlins are holding off selling seats for the July 28-30 series with the Mets, because there is a strong chance those games will be played in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Expect MLB to do everything it can to workout a deal that will have the Marlins and the Mets playing a series in San Juan. While nothing from the series is beneficial to the Marlins or possibly the Mets, it may help the promotion of baseball abroad.

"Baseball is in a crisis stage in Puerto Rico right now," said Carlos Berroa, a Florida Marlins scout and an instructor at the private Puerto Rican Baseball Academy and High School in Gurabo. "It's embarrassing."

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So it's going to take some time to fix, says Eduardo Perez, a 13-year major league player who spent 10 winters playing for Santurce.

"It's definitely in crisis. But you can't overnight try to resurrect something that, through the years, has been deteriorating and nobody has done anything about it," said Perez, who filled the void by organizing a two-month training camp in San Juan, a program that drew more than two-thirds of the 140 Puerto Ricans under contract to major league teams.

"It's an economic issue here. It's turned into politics," Perez said. "It's turned into everything but the main thing that glues everybody together: the game."

While I'm not in favor of the Marlins losing a home series, if the loss of the home games will be beneficial to the game of baseball as a whole, then fine.

But I somehow doubt taking away a home series from the Marlins will actually be a plus when all is taken into consideration, i.e. trying to grow the fan base in South Florida as opposed to growing the international fan base abroad. At least in the short-run, in the long-run it may be the thing to do. However, the Marlins are still trying to grow a fan base, if playing some games in Puerto Rico is the correct thing for MLB to do, couldn't they rob home games from a team with an already established fan base?

Just a thought.

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Fan base

If they sent out teams with an already established fan base, they would be in such an uproar from losing home games that it would never happen.

From MLB's standpoint, there won't be much of a backlash from Marlins fans, seeing as they don't believe we exist to begin with.

by Matt Wilson on Feb 11, 2008 12:32 PM EST reply actions

Orgilla

If you're going to send two teams it might as well be one from New York and one from Florida. If it's not Marlins/Mets, maybe Yankees/Rays. It'd be interesting to see a ranking of Puerto Rican loyalty towards different teams. I would think those 4 would come in near the top. The Rays may be a stretch, but there's a significant PR population in Orlando who has access to Rays games.

by brickell on Feb 11, 2008 5:25 PM EST reply actions