Derek Jeter tries to justify giving Yankees Giancarlo Stanton
MIAMI — Derek Jeter says that when his ownership group took over the Miami Marlins in October, he thought Giancarlo Stanton would be with the team in 2018.
Instead, Stanton is with the Yankees, with whom Jeter became a baseball legend — a fact that Jeter said neither bothered him nor excited him.
“I had no feeling about trading him to the Yankees,” Jeter said on a conference call Monday. “I wanted the best deal.”
Jeter says the Marlins traded Stanton because the National League MVP didn’t want to be part of the franchise’s rebuilding and instead wanted to move on.
“I told him this organization is trying to build,” said Jeter, who inherited a franchise losing millions and has tried to strip it down. “We can build with you or without you. He had the right to make the decision.”
Jeter says the deal with the Yankees was the best one available to the Marlins, giving them much-needed financial flexibility while helping a weak farm system.
The Marlins’ new CEO made his comments Monday shortly before Stanton held a news conference at baseball’s Winter Meetings in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., to discuss a trade being celebrated in New York but panned by beleaguered Miami fans.