The abrupt departure of Marlins general manager Kim Ng on Monday morning came as a result of numerous instances in which Ng — who led the Marlins to the playoffs this season for the first time in a full-season year since 2003 — felt like she was being stripped of her power and underappreciated, multiple sources briefed on the matter told The Athletic.
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One of the chief issues, sources say, was that the organization — which picked up Ng’s mutual option for 2024 before she declined her end — didn’t offer her a new three-year deal following the team’s success in 2023, a practice considered fairly standard in the industry when an executive is at the end of their deal or has achieved significant accomplishments. Ng signed her first contract with the Marlins in the winter before 2021, when she hadn’t yet proven what she could do. Ng should, as one major-league source put it, “be in a different class of salary” and not have her option picked up, which would effectively make her a lame-duck GM.
The organization also wanted to hire a president of baseball operations over Ng, which would have effectively been a demotion and prevented her from restructuring baseball operations in the way she wanted to, multiple sources briefed on the matter said. Ng and owner Bruce Sherman, who sources close to the situation say is a huge proponent of analytics, had different ideas regarding personnel decisions and where some of the team’s resources should be allotted.
Ng, who people within the Marlins organization lauded for helping change the culture, was also having trouble getting rid of some of Miami’s holdovers from previous regimes. While the club did part ways with polarizing vice president of scouting and player development Gary Denbo midway through 2022, and senior director of international operations Adrian Lorenzo did not return when his contract was up last year, sources say Ng wanted to make changes in some other high-ranking leadership roles in scouting and player development, which ownership seemingly was not receptive to. The analytics department is overseen by assistant general manager Daniel Greenlee.
Ng told The Athletic’s Tyler Kepner on Monday morning that she and Sherman discussed the plan for baseball operations moving forward last week, and “In our discussions, it became apparent that we were not completely aligned on what that should look like and I felt it best to step away,” Ng said.
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“I wish to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to the Marlins family and its fans for my time in South Florida,” Ng said. “This year was a great step forward for the organization, and I will miss working with Skip and his coaches, as well as all of the dedicated staff in baseball operations and throughout the front office. They are a very talented group and I wish them great success in the future.”
In a statement, Sherman thanked Ng “for her contributions during her time with our organization and (we) wish her and her family well.”
Multiple sources briefed on the matter told The Athletic that Ng’s departure will be a tumultuous time for an organization that also saw CEO Derek Jeter exit less than two years ago, citing differences with ownership. In the view of multiple people in the organization, Ng did the job well enough to warrant more say and pay.
Sherman said in his statement that the search for a new baseball head will begin immediately, and interim GM Brian Chattin is a longtime Marlins employee who is generally well thought of in the game. (Chattin was previously an AGM.) Still, any new hire will almost certainly be wary of what happened with Ng, and, to a lesser extent, Jeter.
The Marlins received massive amounts of positive press for hiring Ng, who was the first female GM in baseball history, as well as the first GM of East Asian descent. Now, they have to deal with the backlash of allowing a trailblazer, who by many accounts had the organization on the right path, to walk away.
It’s fair to wonder where Ng goes from here, as both current open general manager jobs come with caveats. There is Boston, where people in the industry remain wary of a job in which ownership has cycled through multiple candidates over the past five years, and one in which any new GM will be inheriting most of its front office as well as manager Alex Cora, who has considerable power, according to industry sources. There’s also the Mets’ GM job, though David Stearns was hired as president to oversee the organization earlier this month, and thus Ng would again be No. 2.
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It remains to be seen if other organizations will make front office moves or if Ng would be considered for a president role, with some rumblings in the industry that perhaps the Chicago White Sox — with whom Ng began her career in 1990 and served as an assistant director of baseball operations from 1995-96 — would be interested in her overseeing newly promoted general manager Chris Getz.
— Tyler Kepner and Ken Rosenthal contributed to this report.
(Top photo of Kim Ng: Quinn Harris / Getty Images)
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