Kim Ng won’t play for the Marlins again in 2024: What should we make of GM’s unexpected exit?
By Brittany Ghiroli, Tyler Kepner and Evan Drellich
Less than two weeks after the Marlins’ return to the postseason, shocking news came out of Miami on Monday that general manager Kim Ng will not return to the club in 2024. Here’s what you need to know:
Ng’s departure came as a result of numerous instances in which Ng felt like she was being stripped of her power and underappreciated, sources briefed on the matter told The Athletic.Marlins chairman and principal owner Bruce Sherman announced that although the club exercised Ng’s team option to return for the 2024 season, she declined.Ng told The Athletic that she and Sherman discussed his plan to reshape the Marlins’ baseball operations department last week. “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.The Marlins hired Ng, MLB’s first female GM, in November 2020.
What else Ng mentioned
“I want to thank the Marlins family and its supporters from the bottom of my heart for my time here in South Florida,” Ng remarked. “The organization made great strides this year, and I will miss working with Skip and his coaches and all of the hardworking employees in front office and baseball operations. They are a really talented group, and I hope the future holds nothing but the best for them.
What the Marlins said
“We thank Kim for her contributions during her time with our organization and wish her and her family well,” Sherman said in a statement.
Sherman added that the team’s search for “new leadership” begins immediately.
Inside Ng’s surprising departure
One of the chief issues, sources briefed on the matter said, was that the Marlins 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.
According to several people briefed on the matter, the organization also intended to appoint a president of baseball operations instead of Ng, which would have amounted to a demotion and prevented her from reorganizing baseball operations as she saw fit. Owner Bruce Sherman, a big fan of analytics, according to people familiar with the situation, and Ng disagreed on how to allocate some of the team’s resources and make hiring decisions. — Senior writer for MLB, Brittany Ghiroli
I spoke with Ng as she gave that statement, and that’s all she wanted to say. But read those words, and it’s significant that the first sentence involves “his plan to reshape the baseball operations department.” It’s no stretch to think that after leading the Marlins to the playoffs for the first time (in a full season) in two decades, the architect of the team might want more say in the structure of the baseball operations department — and more of a commitment from ownership than simply the exercising of a mutual option year.
Ng’s departure — about 20 months after Derek Jeter’s departure as the team’s chief executive — raises questions about Sherman’s vision for the organization. How does a franchise fail to retain not just one, but two highly respected baseball minds with championship pedigrees? It’s a sobering and bewildering day for a team that should be building off its most encouraging season in decades.
Ultimately, Ng’s resignation marks a significant turning point in the career of the first female leader of a baseball operations group in professional sports, as front offices have traditionally been homogenous and effectively exclusive.
The Boston Red Sox may face competition in their search for a new department head as a result of her departure from the team. Furthermore, Ng is obviously free to accept a position elsewhere.Ng’s departure comes nearly two weeks since the Marlins reached the postseason for the first time in three years. Miami’s postseason was short-lived after it was defeated by the Philadelphia Phillies in two games in the Wild Card Series.
However, it was a significant moment for Ng and baseball as she became the first female general manager to lead a major-league team to the playoffs.
Prior to her arrival in Miami, Ng, 54, served as MLB’s senior vice president for baseball operations from 2011 to 2020. She previously worked as vice president and assistant GM of the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2001 to 2011, and before that as the New York Yankees’ vice president and assistant GM from 1998 to 2001.
Ng was the first woman to interview for a GM position in MLB history when the Dodgers spoke to her in 2005.
