Yankees president vents about Marlins and Tampa Bay Rays and what’s unacceptable to him

The New York Yankees missed the playoffs this season with the second-largest payroll in baseball at $279.1 million.

Meanwhile, the Marlins and Tampa Bay Rays made the playoffs with the 22nd- and 27th-largest payrolls at $105.4 million (for Miami) and $79.3 million (for the Rays), per figures from spotrac.com.

So if there’s ever a time that the Yankees might voice public displeasure about MLB’s revenue sharing plan — which redirects millions from high-revenue to lower-revenue teams — this would probably be the time.

During a panel discussion this week at Sportico’s Invest in Sports conference, Yankees president Randy Levine criticized the Marlins and Rays for receiving revenue from large-market teams while continuing to rank in the bottom quarter in attendance.

“A lot more focus has to be on individual teams to do better and not just rely on revenue sharing,” Levine said, in quotes reported by the Associated Press.

“You can’t have two Florida teams averaging 15,000 fans. You can’t have it. You don’t go into an NFL stadium or an NBA arena and see that.

“And I think that there’s been a dependency issue that’s got to get better. ... The commissioner has done an incredible job, but now it’s on individual teams. Instead of complaining and whining, ‘We need more money,’ you got to take some responsibility.”

The Marlins averaged 14,355 fans per game, 29th among the 30 teams. But that was a significant increase from the Marlins’ 2022 average attendance of 11,203.

Tampa Bay was 27th at 17,781.

The Marlins declined to respond to Levine’s comments.

Per MLB’s rules, teams pool 48 percent of the revenue they earn, and the total amount is then split evenly and given to each team. That helps direct money from big-market teams with lucrative media deals to teams, like the Marlins, that don’t get high-end broadcast revenue.

The Marlins and Rays were eliminated in the wild card round. The Marlins went 84-78, their first winning team in a non-COVID season since 2009. The Rays have had six consecutive winning seasons.

ARBITRATION UPDATE

The Marlins have an unusually high number of arbitration-eligible players (11), and baseballtraderumors.com projects they would make nearly $37 million next season if all go through the arbitration process.

Of the 11, it’s highly questionable if the Marlins will tender catcher Jacob Stallings, who hit .191 and threw out only 9 of 67 base-runners. MLBtraderumors.com projects Stallings to make $3.6 million in arbitration if he’s tendered and goes to arbitration.

Here are the website’s projected salaries for the Marlins’ other arbitration-eligible players:

Luis Arraez: 10.8 million; Jesus Luzardo: $5.9 million; Tanner Scott: $5.8 million; Jazz Chisholm: $2.8 million.

A.J. Puk: $1.8 million; Trevor Rogers: $1.5 million; Garrett Hampson: $1.3 million; JT Chargois: $1.2 million; Steven Okert: $1.2 million; Jonathan Davis: $800,000.

The Marlins’ payroll would shrink considerably if Jorge Soler opts out of $13 million, as widely expected, and if Josh Bell opts out of $16.5 million. Both have player options for 2024.

Beyond the projected salary for Arraez, the Marlins’ other high salaries on the books for 2024 are Avisail Garcia ($12 million) and Sandy Alcantara ($9.3 million). Alcantara will miss the season recovering from elbow surgery.

Jon Berti is due $3.6 million in 2024.

Several other Marlins — including Eury Perez, Edward Cabrera, Braxton Garrett, Jesus Sanchez and Bryan De La Cruz — remain under team control, not yet arbitration eligible.

The Marlins assuredly will not exercise the $10.5 million team option on Johnny Cueto and the $8 million team option on Matt Barnes. The Barnes buyout for the Marlins is $2.25 million; the Cueto buyout is $2.5 million.