At the risk of not just beating, but pummeling to fine pulp, I want to take one final look at the vivisection of the Florida Marlins. I've estimated that the Marlins have sliced off over $57 M of the $60 M they committed to players last season.

Of course, some of the remaining players will get salary increases given the extra year of experience. I estimated that Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera would be bumped up to about $5M each after arbitration. Brian Moehler just re-signed for $1.5M (up from $400K in 2005). All tolled, assuming that the Marlins fill in their remaining roster spots with league-minimum salaries, I estimate that they will have a team payroll of a little over $19M or almost $41M less than last year. It's also only about double the league minimum payroll ($8M based on 25 players at league minimum, $320K).

They will in effect have cut two-thirds of their payroll in one offseason. Has anything like this ever happened before? I can't imagine it.

Unfortunately, most player salaries and team payrolls were not published until about 20 years ago, and most of what we have until recently we have thanks to the late Doug Pappas. I ran the payroll numbers and here are the teams that cut 40% or more of their salary in one year (including only teams with complete payroll numbers):<.p>

Team	Yr	Payroll	Prev Payroll	Diff
Texas Rangers	2004	55,050,417	103,491,667	-48,441,250
Cleveland Indians	2003	48,584,834	78,909,449	-30,324,615
Cincinnati Reds	1998	23,005,000	49,768,000	-26,763,000
Toronto Blue Jays	2003	51,269,000	76,864,333	-25,595,333
Tampa Bay Devil Rays	2002	34,380,000	56,980,000	-22,600,000
Pittsburgh Pirates	2004	32,227,929	54,812,429	-22,584,500
Baltimore Orioles	2004	51,623,333	73,877,500	-22,254,167
Arizona Diamondbacks	2003	80,657,000	102,819,999	-22,162,999
Florida Marlins	1999	21,085,000	41,322,667	-20,237,667
New York Mets	2004	96,660,970	116,876,429	-20,215,459
Toronto Blue Jays	1996	30,555,083	50,590,000	-20,034,917

Unfortunately, the Marlins are going to have a tough time topping the 2004 Rangers who cut over $48M from their payroll. Losing A-Rod helped, but he only got them halfway there. Of course, the Rangers went from one of the highest payrolls in baseball to around the league average (which was $59,304,725 in 2004). The Marlins are attempting to go from league average (actually about $5M below it) to about $10M less than any other team.

What if instead we looked at the percentage of payroll lost:

It looks like the Marlins are doing something that's never been done before—well, at least in recent memory and if some like Connie Mack cut two-thirds of his payroll, it was never with salary numbers like these.

I repeat, this looks to be an historic season ahead for the Marlins. Whether the end game is contraction, relocation, the sale of the club, or just to extort a new stadium from the locals, I cannot say. But this team has been thoroughly disemboweled. If there are any fans left in Miami, I pity them, and that's something coming from a Phillies fan.