Glavine says his bidding group also would've slashed Marlins' payroll

Had his bidding group been successful, Tom Glavine - the Hall of Famer who, along with Tagg Romney, tried earlier this offseason to buy the Miami Marlins from Jeffrey Loria - suggested he would've made many of the unpopular, payroll-slashing trades that have inspired so much invective toward the club's new ownership group, fronted by Bruce Sherman and Derek Jeter.

"I think you can certainly question how they have handled it. I don’t think they’ve done themselves any favors from a PR standpoint, but in terms of business moves, I don’t know we would have done a whole lot different," Glavine told Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe. "We certainly targeted many of the same things. Obviously one contract stands out (Giancarlo Stanton’s), so I don’t think that would have been any different."

Having inherited roughly $400 million in debt from the purchase of the club - and with projections pegging them to lose money again in 2018 - the Marlins' new owners purged their roster of expensive talent in recent weeks, trading away Stanton, the reigning National League MVP, as well as Dee Gordon, Marcell Ozuna, and Christian Yelich. With less than three weeks to go until the start of spring training, the Marlins' payroll sits at roughly $87 million - down nearly 25 percent from last year's all-time high of $115 million - and more moves are likely coming (following the Yelich trade on Thursday, J.T. Realmuto's name started resurfacing in rumors.)

With the franchise in dire financial straits, though, a firesale was necessary, according to Glavine.

"You don’t go into the business to perennially lose money," Glavine said. "Depending who you talk to, they were losing a lot of money on a yearly basis. The only way to get that under control is to get your payroll under control, and everyone knew what that meant even though it’s an unpopular stance to have to take. We were of the same mind-set as to the moves that had to be made to get payroll under control."